


Episode 1: Getting Old

by The_Raconteur_24601



Series: Borrowed Time (and Space) [1]
Category: Doctor Who, The Borrowers - All Media Types
Genre: Adventure, Friendship, Gen, it's pretty well explained, you don't have to read borrowers to follow what's going on
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-10
Updated: 2013-03-15
Packaged: 2017-11-28 21:13:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 22,619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/678948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Raconteur_24601/pseuds/The_Raconteur_24601
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor, when he first returned to his Tardis, was content with traveling on alone. Without a companion. Forever lonely. Then he met Zepheera.<br/>Zepheera is a member of a secret race of little people who live in human homes, out of sight. To survive, they 'borrow' what they need from the humans. Naturally, when the Doctor stumbles upon her--or rather, when she stumbles upon the Doctor--they fascinate each other.<br/>And as it usually goes, what starts off as a quick trip escalates quickly and becomes a matter of life and death, the destruction or safety of Earth.</p><p>[UNDER CONSTRUCTION]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

Prologue

Midnight marked the 23rd of November for London in the year 2000. In a small alleyway beside an abandoned street, if anyone were around, they’d hear a soft mechanical whirring noise. The most beautiful, terrible, wonderful noise ever to be heard. They’d also notice a man in a trench coat walk down the sidewalk with his hands in his pockets.

This man, some say, had no name. If asked, he’d respond with ‘The Doctor’ and say no more than that. Normally, he’d have an air about him, walking about lightly on his toes like he owned the place. He would also have someone with him. A companion.

But he had a serious, almost sad glint in his eyes. And he was alone. And, after all that had happened with his most recent companion and best friend Donna, he thought that’s how he should be. Forever without company, forever lonely.

At the same time, about eight feet below where he stood, a girl was tossing and turning violently in her sleep, causing her legs to become entangled in what was meant to be a blanket. She was mumbling words that, if overheard, would make little sense. One of them, the one she said the clearest, was Gallifrey.

This girl’s name was Zepheera, and she was a borrower.


	2. Zepheera

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Revised 11/25/15

Chapter 1: Zepheera

Not much is known about borrowers, by humans or otherwise. They tend to hide, and their small size makes it easy. Borrowers look very much like humans, only they’re very small, never bigger than six inches. They make their homes in human establishments, in the walls and under the floor. Some live outside if they’re careful. They are a secret race, and they intend to keep it that way. They, for generations, have remained convinced that humans are vile giants that have only one instinct when they see a borrower: to kill it.

They get the name ‘borrower’ from the fact that they have nothing of their own and, in order to survive, take what they need from humans. You might call it stealing, but to them it’s merely borrowing.

In their opinion, they are the proper size and the humans are the ones of abnormal height. Humans, of course, think opposite, which only infuriates the borrowers further.

Now, Zepheera was a typical borrower, at least that’s what she would tell you. She was a decent height of 4 ½ inches and her dark brown hair was cut into a short, messy bob. Her eyes were stern; they looked much older than the rest of her, and were a deep violet in color. She looked young, no more than 18 years old to the casual passerby. She was lean but athletic, and possessed a very surprising supply of strength and agility. Her relatively small stature made it easy for her to fit into tight places, an excellent asset for any borrower to have. She only owned one set of clothes: a hand-sewn brick-red shirt with short sleeves, denim capris and a vest made from a candy wrapper. Her feet were clad in improvised moccasins of leather she’d made. She also had a belt made of string from which she hung various things.

She didn’t live anywhere in particular; she moved around a lot. Hence, she owned very few possessions.  These included a messenger bag she’d had since she was very young, a fishing hook still tied to a long line that she’d discovered a few months earlier and a machete she’d fashioned herself.

Nine hours and thirty-seven minutes after the Doctor arrived; Zepheera was still turning in her sleep, her legs becoming more entangled every second. Her dream had changed; she was in a dark place and she could see in the distance a large thundercloud rumbling closer, filled with streaks of light, impressions of lightning.

An oncoming storm.

“No!” she woke with a start and sat up quickly, knocking her head against the glass of the milk bottle that had become her home that week.

She groaned in pain and frustration at herself for doing something so stupid. She rubbed the tender spot of her forehead as it started to bruise. The bruise faded before it had even formed fully. Zepheera had always been a quick healer.

She rubbed the sleep from her eyes and tried to move her legs into a cross-legged position. It was then that she realized that the old bit of cloth that served as a blanket had them trapped tightly. Rolling her eyes, she began loosening its grip.  She was almost free when a scuttling above her head could be heard and she looked up. A cockroach waved its antennae wildly on the other side of the glass. She rapped on the glass and it scurried off into the depths of the sewers.

Zepheera gave a sigh as she slipped on her vest and shoes. After everything she’d done, everywhere she’d gone, she was reduced to hiding in places like the sewers.

She’d spent most of her life alone, nearly as long as she could remember. She didn’t mind so much anymore. She didn’t need anyone. She didn’t want anyone. She could take care of herself.

Her empty stomach growled. She looked over at her messenger bag; it was empty as well. She knew she couldn’t fill one without filling the other, so she slung her bag over her shoulder, hung her hook on her belt and strapped her weapon onto her back.

“Time to scavenge,” she muttered.

A lump of foam, probably from an old mattress, stoppered the milk bottle to keep out the bugs and sewer rats. She kicked it and it popped out. She crawled out and replaced it, strolling along the floor of the sewer into a hole in the wall. It led to a tunnel, then a makeshift ladder, and then another tunnel that opened into an alleyway in London.

Zepheera had traveled to many places all over the country, stowing away on trains and busses, but the place she seemed to always come back to was London. It just felt like home.

Her bare arms and shins were brushed with a brisk breeze that held hints of both autumn and winter. She rubbed her arms with the opposite hands in an attempt to warm them, shivering slightly. The sewer had been warm and damp, and this sudden change in atmosphere washed her with an unwelcome wave of cold.

The sound of fluttering wings made her lowered head snap up. On the other side of the alley, an old woman was scattering unshelled peanuts to a flock of pigeons that were fluttering and cooing like mad. Zepheera made a disgusted face. In her experience, birds were always a nuisance.  Especially pigeons.

On the other hand, if she could somehow manage to collect enough peanuts to fill her bag, she’d be eating for a long while. Food was food.

She took a deep breath and ran up to into the crowd of pigeons and the old woman scattered another handful of peanuts. Two landed at Zepheera’s feet; she knelt down and undid the latch on her bag. She got one in her bag and reached for the other, but it was attacked by three pigeons at once. She closed her bag and backed away, moving around and waiting for the next handful.

This process was slow, but she managed to get seven peanuts crammed into her bag. She closed it happily and turned back to her hole when there came a loud feline yowl from behind her.

Zepheera whipped around and her eyes widened. A rather fat cat leapt into sight from behind the old woman and landed amongst the pigeons, which flew away. Its gold-and-black eyes found Zepheera and its pupils dilated.

Her heart began racing and for once she wished she was a pigeon so she could fly away too. She and cats didn’t exactly have a good history. She turned on her heel and dashed for the hole in the wall, but the cat was way ahead of her. It pounced over her head and landed directly in front of the hole, hissing. Zepheera skidded to a stop and the cat swiped at her, its claws grazing her left arm. It tore skin as well as fabric, and her sleeve was barely hanging on by a thread. Thunder clapped loudly, and the dark clouds above threatened rain.

Ignoring her pain, she thought quickly and ran into the sidewalk where dozens upon dozens of humans were walking. Arms pumping wildly at her sides, she kept as close to the edge of the walk as possible, passing enormous feet unnoticed. The cat wasn’t so stealthy.

‘Okay, Zepheera, think!’ she thought frantically. ‘There must be someplace to hide, a box, a tin, anything! Check the next alley.’ Thunder sounded again and a drop of water fell on her left shoulder, the dirty water stinging her healing wounds and soaking into her shirt. Her arm kept catching on the hanging remains of the torn sleeve, so she ripped it off, tossing it aside. She could always mend it later.

She began running faster, every muscle in her legs aching. She turned right into the alley and stopped short. There _was_ a box, but not the type she’d thought of. It was a big, blue wood box.

Zepheera had only time to notice that the door was ajar as the cat barreled around the corner after her. Her heart jumped into her throat and she sprinted toward the box, slipped in and pushed the surprisingly compliant door shut with her good shoulder.

She could hear the cat scratching at the wood of the door until it seemed to give up. All went quiet except for the muffled pitter-patter of the rain. She let out a sigh of relief and examined her arm. It had scabbed over, leaving a nasty stain on what remained of her sleeve. She frowned, running her thumb over the slowly disappearing scab; scratches this shallow would have healed by now. Must have been all the exertion from the chase, she reasoned.

A mechanical wheeze made her turn around. Her jaw dropped. The room she saw was immense, much larger than a regular phone box. It looked like some sort of control room straight out of a science-fiction film. She slowly scaled the ramp that led to the structure in the middle of the room, the glowing column. At the end of the ramp, she very nearly fell through the floor, which was a grate similar to a catwalk. Taking care with each step, she kept walking, turning in circles to look at the entire room.

She had only had a brief glance of the outside, and at the time she had thought she had seen a box, but perhaps instead she merely came across an odd door that led to some strange kind of building. Regardless, the place worried her.

What worried her wasn’t the column, or the towering coral-like supports all around the room, or even those odd noises that echoed off the walls and seemed to come from everywhere at once. What worried her was that, for once, her elbows and ankles didn’t ache.

Borrowers develop this feeling in certain areas of their body, unique to each borrower, which warns them when a human is near. In Zepheera’s case, her elbows and ankles would start to ache in a way similar to growing pains, but not quite as strong (unless the human in question got dangerously close).

But she didn’t feel anything. Normally, this meant that she was alone. So why did she feel like she was being watched?

She gasped when she heard a key being inserted into the door. She was in the middle of the floor and had nowhere to hide in time. Acting on pure instinct, she spotted some kind of desk cluttered with scraps of metal and junk. It was below the raised catwalk, tucked away in a corner. She unshouldered her bag and threw it with all of her strength, memorizing the spot on the desk where it landed. She gripped the metal of the floor and dropped through, hanging by her fingers, just as the door swung open. She forced herself to not look down.

Instead, she kept her gaze up at the man that ran in and slammed the door behind him. She couldn’t get a good look at him from the angle she currently had; she only saw a whipping hem of an overcoat and the soles of his converse, which came very close to treading on her fingers at one point. He went quickly to the console and did something that made the entire room pitch. One of Zepheera’s hands slipped and she bit her tongue to keep from screaming. She waved her arm frantically around, looking down into the depths of wherever the hell she was. Her insides turned to lead and she resolved _not_ to fall. She regained her grip and looked up as the man ran back out. With a grunt of effort, Zepheera pulled herself up.

She scratched her head, confused. There was no mistaking that man’s human appearance, but she hadn’t felt anything to indicate that he was there at all.

A breeze broke her out of her thoughts. The door was once again open, this time enough for her to see outside. She looked…her eyes widened.

“No way,” she breathed.

Incredulous, she ran forward, her foot slipping once on the precarious floor, and sure enough, she was looking at the roof of the abandoned parking garage across town.

 _But—it’s a building! How could it_ move _?_

With a deep, confused frown, she rushed outside, spinning in a 180 to gaze straight up at the blue doors she had seen in the alleyway. She scurried to the right, not bothering to dodge the raindrops and not caring that she was getting soaked, measuring the outside of the box with her eyes. It took her several minutes to go all the way around it, ensuring that it was indeed a _box_ —just a _box_. And yet when she went back inside, it was still as impossibly enormous as it had been. She turned and stared out the door, her mind racing to try and solve this conundrum. There had to be an explanation. There just _had_ to. She stood there like this, for how long she was too deep in thought to figure.

She snapped back to reality when a man in a pinstriped suit and brown overcoat, the man from earlier, came running up to the box. She hurried to the other side of the door frame and pressed her back against the wall. The man entered and closed the door, completely unaware of Zepheera’s presence. He threw his wet overcoat over one of the coral supports.

As Zepheera peered up at him, she realized that she was afraid of him. And not just because he towered over her; every single human being did that and it hadn’t bothered her since she was a young girl. It was that he wasn’t human, and if _they_ were to be feared, how much more should she fear him?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New chapters'll come on Mondays and Fridays. Hope you enjoy it (:


	3. Caught

Chapter 2: Caught

The man approached the center structure, pushed a few buttons and threw a few levers and, without any warning, the whole room tilted. Zepheera was knocked off of her feet, landed on her left shoulder and rolled head-over-heels up the ramp until the tilt changed and she started rolling sideways to the right along the main floor. Then, the room shook with something similar to airplane turbulence; Zepheera was thrown a few inches into the air, flipped once and landed hard on her back. She moaned as the air was expelled from her lungs and gasped as she painfully tried to fill them.

She saw in her peripheral vision the man’s head snap up and look around. He hit several things on the console with a hammer and the room came to a sudden stop.

Zepheera flew straight into one of the coral supports, exclaiming in pain as her right shoulder popped out of its socket. She slid to the floor, wincing and grasping her immobile arm.

“Erm…hello.”

Zepheera exclaimed again, this time in surprise. She looked up at the man who was looking down at her with a raised eyebrow. Her eyes grew large and she froze.

“Who are you? How did you get in here?” the man tried again.

Zepheera didn’t move, didn’t say anything.

“Can you speak?” The man took a few steps forward and reached for something in the inside pocket of his suit.

Startled by this movement, Zepheera panicked and ran.

“Wait!” But she had already circled to the other side of the console. The man came around and started searching, but she ran to the opposite end of the room and hid behind a coral stalk. She sat down there, gripping her injured shoulder. It now hurt a _lot._

“I don’t want to hurt you!” called the man, whom she guessed was still searching for her. “I want to help you!”

Zepheera scoffed bitterly, knowing better than to believe a word that came out of him. She looked up at the coral-like structure that hid her from the man. She could climb it, but not one-handed. She’d have to fix her arm. It was going to hurt a lot and there was no way she could do it silently. The man would hear it and find her.

She clenched her jaw, closed her eyes and pushed her arm into place; it made a sickening crack and she squeaked in pain.

Flexing her arm, she took up her hook as she heard his approaching footsteps. She used it to ascend the coral, jabbing it into the material like a mountain-climber’s pick-ax. She climbed surprisingly quickly and stopped at a fork in the coral about ten feet up. She stood in its crotch and looked around; the man was crouching below her, looking for her; she spotted another coral stalk not too far away. She could reach it with her hook and line. She untied the loop from her belt that held the fishing wire and began swinging the hook over her head.

She threw it with all the strength she could muster and it wrapped around the stalk once and caught back on the wire. Gripping the thin fishing line tightly, she glanced down at the man as he stood, holding a metal rod in his hand. He pressed a button and the tip glowed blue and emitted a buzzing sound. He frowned at it and lifted his chin, looking up toward the ceiling.

Zepheera took a deep breath and jumped.

“Pardon me!” she said as she whizzed past his ear and on past the coral support. She swung in a wide arc around it and then let go, flying onto the cluttered corner desk where there were plenty scraps of metal to hide behind. She ducked under something metal and held her breath.

She heard the man leap over the railing and land heavily on the floor, then the sound of his feet slowly walking closer and coming to a halt. Then came that buzzing noise again, this time louder, closer. It tugged at her brain, almost beckoning her to come out, and she couldn’t help but feel like a rodent cornered by the exterminator. The noise stopped abruptly, and she became unusually aware of her breathing (which was usually undetectable by human ears, but she reminded herself that those ears weren’t human) and she covered her mouth with her hand.

“Listen,” the man’s voice boomed alarmingly close and Zepheera’s insides rearranged uncomfortably. She gripped her knees, but kept quiet. “I’m the Doctor. I don’t know who you are or how and why you’ve come aboard my ship. But if it’s a planet you’re in need of, or even just a lift home, I can provide it. Just let me help you.”

‘He’s _completely_ mad!’ she decided. ‘I’d better get out of here. But how can I do that without him notic-‘

“Please. You don’t have to hide from me.” His gentle voice broke Zepheera out of her thoughts. She tried to ignore him and looked around for a getaway route. She calculated a safe barricade to shuffle behind, lowered her hand, and slowly regained her footing.

Unfortunately, she had forgotten the fact that her entire person was still damp from the rain, and all her dripping from sitting still had created a small puddle that her shoe slipped in as she got to her feet; she fell to one knee, painfully landing on the bone, and suppressed a shout of pain and surprise behind her lips. But that couldn't stop her from being heard.

Zepheera gasped loudly as the scrap of metal that hid her was lifted quickly, leaving her exposed on the tabletop. She looked up; the man was looking down at her, one hand in his suit pocket and the other holding the scrap of metal. His brow was raised, on the verge of disappearing underneath that messy brown hair.

Zepheera realized just how afraid she really was. She quailed and backed up until she was stopped by some other piece of metal. Her insides had run cold and her little heart threatened to burst out of her chest.

The man set down the metal in his hand, then came down on his knees. Unseen, he pulled something out of his pocket and set it on the floor; he then put on a pair of thick-rimmed spectacles, rested his forearms on the desk and placed his chin on his arms, smiling. She backed up another few millimeters until the metal behind her started jabbing uncomfortably into her back.

For a while, neither of them said anything. She didn't like that he was so near to her now, but she was too much in shock to say anything about it. Or say anything for that matter.

“Can you talk?” the man who had called himself ‘the Doctor’ asked gently.

All she could do was nod vigorously.

The Doctor’s grin widened, and then faded a little. “Will you?”

After a second’s hesitation, Zepheera shook her head ‘no’.

The Doctor looked a bit disappointed. “Why not?”

She couldn’t come up with an excuse that she could convey without speaking. Time for plan B: Run for it.

She didn’t get far.

Faster than she could see, the Doctor whipped out a glass mason jar – a rather large one – and placed the lip in the direction she was running. She tripped over it and tumbled into her glass prison. The Doctor lifted it in both hands, turned it upright carefully– Zepheera didn’t enjoy sliding around for that bit – and set it back down on the desk.

Zepheera managed to her feet and glared at the Doctor, whose head was once again resting on his arms. “Hey! Let me out!” she yelled, her voice muffled by the glass. She jumped, her arms reaching for the opening of the jar. It was just out of reach. She tried kicking off the walls of the jar, but no luck there. In frustration, she drew her machete and began hitting the glass as hard as she could.

“That won’t do you much good,” the Doctor pointed out. “That glass was fused with an unnamed alloy from Venoxia 4-9. Impossible to break.”

Zepheera stopped in mid-swing. It dawned on her that after all those swings she hadn’t even scratched the glass. She looked at her slightly bent blade, and then glared at the man. She dropped her weapon and it clattered to the bottom of the jar.

“There we go,” grinned the man. “No more violence.”

Zepheera raised an eyebrow.

“’No more violence,’” she repeated. “I take it you’re not going to kill me then.”

The Doctor looked appalled at the idea. “Why would I do that?”

“Because I know humans. I’ve been raised hating humans. They’re vicious. They kill b- us. But _you,_ ” she narrowed her eyes and pointed an accusing finger at him, “aren’t human.” It wasn’t a question. “So I don’t exactly know what to make of you.”

The Doctor gave her a very serious look. “What makes you say that?” He neither confirmed nor denied her accusation.

“Well, for one, no human can develop a ‘ship’ like this that’s smaller on the outside.” She made air quotes when she said ‘ship’.

“’Smaller on the outside.’ No one’s ever put it that way,” the Doctor grinned again.

Ignoring him, Zepheera continued: “Secondly, you speak of different planets like a person would speak of cities; easy to travel to and reach and find. And thirdly, my kind develops a sort of sixth sense that tells us when a human’s around. I don’t feel it and I’m no less than a foot away from you, so tell me, _Doctor_ ,” she rose to her full height and crossed her arms, “Who the hell are you _really_?”

The Doctor seemed hesitant, but Zepheera stood her ground, maintaining an unblinking glare until he finally answered, “I’m a Time Lord.”

Zepheera noticed that his smile had disappeared and his eyes lacked the cheerful gleam they’d had before. It was as though her question had aroused memories. Sad memories. Old memories. She knew the feeling well and empathized slightly.

She dropped her arms and offered a playful smirk. “Well, _that_ doesn’t sound posh,” she joked. He looked back at her and smiled a small smile, but said nothing.

Something in the back of her mind told Zepheera that she could trust the Doctor. A small part of her agreed, but she decided to play it safe and not let her guard down too much at a time.

The Doctor took in a deep breath and began talking. “I have so many questions. I mean, you absolutely f _ascinate_ me! You look completely human, apart from your size, and yet you speak about humans like you’re not one of them. Tell me, have you always been this size?”

Zepheera was rather taken aback by this sudden question and it took her a tic to stutter a yes. He started to ask something else, but she interrupted him. “Hang on a minute!”

The Doctor blinked. “Yes?”

“You don’t even know my name and I still don’t completely understand where I am,” she pointed out.

“What _is_ your name?” he asked curiously.

“Zepheera.” She sat down in the jar, her arms resting on her knees.

“Zepheera,” the Doctor repeated, grinning as the syllables rolled off his tongue. “That’s a lovely name. It suits you.”

Her own smile appeared. She had had very little social contact in recent years, and so this whole concept of compliments was a bit new to her (or at least, by now, foreign).

“Well, Zepheera, this,” he indicated the entire room, “is my TARDIS.”

Zepheera raised an eyebrow. “TARDIS?” she repeated.

The Doctor nodded once, grinning wildly. “T-A-R-D-I-S. Stands for Time and Relative Dimension in Space. Love her. I travel a lot in her. We go way back.” He seemed so focused on his memories that he momentarily forgot Zepheera. He snapped back to reality and said, “Anyway, moving on: Are you by yourself here or are there more of you about?”

“My entire family; there’s fifteen of us, and that’s not counting the second-cousins.”

The Doctor’s eyes widened “Seriously?” he glanced over his shoulder nervously as though he’d see more little people scurrying about.

Zepheera rolled her eyes. “No, I’m kidding. It’s just me. And I haven’t been here long.”

He looked relieved, but asked, “Why did you come in in the first place?”

She hesitated. “I, er…was being chased…by a cat…and needed to hide.”

From the Doctor’s throat came a sound similar to “Eugh” and he made a slightly disgusted face. “Hate cats.”

“ _Loathe_ them.” Zepheera emphasized. “It clawed my shoulder!”

The Doctor looked at her shoulders, his eyes narrowed as though he were searching for something miniscule.

“Which shoulder?” he asked, head tilted.

“My left.” She lifted what little bit of fabric that remained of her sleeve and folded it back to show her shoulder. It had a single line of dried blood, but no other sign of injury.

“When did that happen?” he inquired as he adjusted his spectacles.

“About…twenty minutes ago? Fifteen?” Zepheera was occupied scraping the dry streaks of red from her skin with her fingernail and didn’t see the confused look on the Doctor’s face.

“But how can you—“

“I heal quickly,” she interrupted him. “Always have. Always will. Inherited trait. Not many people like me can do that.” She stopped what she was doing to smirk rather smugly at the look of approval the Doctor bore.

“That is brilliant. Phenomenal, honestly,” he mused with a wide grin.

Zepheera rolled her eyes and blushed, though she tried to hide it and hoped to god that the Doctor couldn’t see. Her eyes landed on something familiar and her normal color returned. Her bag lay not a foot away next to what looked like an old crank.

“Hey! That there, that’s mine! Can I have it?” The thought of opening the bag and eating its contents made her hungry all over again. She stood, pressed a hand to the glass of the container and pointed at it.

The Doctor looked and reached for it. Zepheera expected him to drop it into the jar without question. But instead he straightened, still on his knees, and turned it over in his hands.

Zepheera looked up at him since he once again towered over her; her insides churned uncomfortably.

“What’s in here?” asked the Doctor, still examining it closely.

“Nothing,” she said defiantly. She was hungry and irritable and didn’t feel like explaining herself.

The Doctor looked down at her, slight suspicion showing. “It’s not nothing, it’s full to bursting. Just answer me this: is it yours?”

“It is now!” she snapped.

The Doctor held it so it hung by the strap from two of his fingers. He looked down at her seriously. “Zepheera, I can’t have thieves aboard this ship, now did you—“

“How _dare_ you call me a thief!” she shouted, interrupting him. The Doctor didn’t react with the exception of his eyes softening a little. “You _dare_ accuse me of stealing! I’m a _borrower_ , not a thief!” she hardly cared that she’d just told him what she was. “That bag? Contains _food_ I’ve borrowed! Now, I’d like it back,” she finished firmly.

“I’m sorry,” said the Doctor genuinely as he reached over and tenderly lowered it into the jar. “I didn’t know.”

Forgetting her anger, she took the bag and swiftly sat down cross-legged. The bag in her lap, she undid the latch and broke off a piece of a peanut small enough to hold in one hand, but big enough to fill her stomach. She hadn’t taken two bites when she looked up at the Doctor. He was sitting on his feet, at her eye level and a bit further back. His expression was curiously somber. She swallowed her food, set her bag aside and closed it.

“I don’t suppose you know anything about borrowers, eh?” she said quietly, absentmindedly fiddling with the tiny chunk of peanut in her hand.

The Doctor shook his head. “Never heard of you.” He said this as though astonished that he didn’t know, but at the same time fascinated by it.

Zepheera nodded, looking at her now still hands. “I could…Would you like to know _some_ thing?”

“You don’t have to.”

“I want to, though,” she interrupted him. Taking a deep breath, she continued:

“It’s said that we started out about the same time as humans, with nothing of our own and in a world full of giants. Cruel, terrible, _stupid_ giants. So we went into hiding and took what we needed from the humans. Nothing too valuable, nothing that’ll be missed, and nothing more than what we needed. In secret, of course, can’t have the humans knowing. Hidden away, in walls and under the floor, sworn never to be seen or heard.” She stopped a moment for effect; she took that moment to examine the Doctor’s expression. He was still listening, so she kept going. “Being seen, it’s never good for us. I had a…a cousin, ten years older than me, he was seen. They…” Her voice cracked in the slightest, but no water clouded her eyes just yet. “They set the rat-catcher after him. They got him within the hour.”

“Oh…I’m so, so sorry,” said the Doctor gently.

“Yeah, well…” she redirected her thoughts to what the Doctor had already told her, anything to change the subject, and she found something interesting. “So,” she began, “TARDIS. Time and Relative Dimension in Space, you said?”

“That’s right!” The Doctor’s smile returned.

“And you’re a traveler. In a TARDIS. So does that mean you travel in…time?”

The Doctor just grinned mischievously at her.

“No,” she chuckled, disbelieving.

“Oh, yes.”

Zepheera crossed her arms, stood, and smirked.

“Prove it,” she challenged.

The Doctor raised one eyebrow, stood, and carefully lifted the jar that contained Zepheera. She moved her feet to a stronger stance as the Doctor carried her back up to the console, set her down on a small couch to the side, and began switching a few levers on the control panel.

“You’re joking,” said Zepheera softly, aghast.

“Nope,” said the Doctor gleefully.

“You’re mad!” she concluded aloud with a laugh.

“Oh, yes!” the Doctor exclaimed, circling back around to Zepheera, lifting her jar again and placing it on the console. He set it down sideways, allowing Zepheera a way out onto the control panel.

“Give me a time and place,” he grinned, pulling a rectangular screen toward himself.

“You’re serious?” said Zepheera, shouldering her bag and ducking out of her container.

“I’m always serious. _Well_ – nearly always. _Well_ …” He smirked at her, and then turned back to the screen.

Zepheera thought carefully. She didn’t fully believe the whole time-traveling bit, but she figured she’d better give him a useful date just in case.

“March eighth, 1927 in London?” she suggested.

The Doctor looked at her. He paused a moment, then grinned as he entered the coordinates. “Right! Allons-y!”


	4. 1927...?

Chapter 3: 1927...?

The Doctor, when he first returned to his Tardis, was content with traveling on alone. Without a companion. Forever lonely.

Then he met Zepheera.

The Doctor had never seen anything like her before. At first, he assumed her to be an alien that had somehow snuck onto his ship, but when he checked on his Sonic Screwdriver, the readings showed nothing to indicate anything foreign to Earth.

When he finally had a proper talk with her, he found her fascinating. She was hard to read, but she was obviously brilliant and awfully mysterious. And the Doctor loved a good mystery.

He was nervous when she discovered the TARDIS was a time machine, brilliant girl she was. He thought she would plead to come with him thinking that time travel would solve all her problems or something along those lines, but she simply challenged him.

He couldn’t resist a simple challenge, nor could he restrain himself from showing off a bit. So he asked her when and where she wanted to go. When she gave him a very specific-sounding date, he hesitated. He didn’t want her to try and change history, Then again, she looked about 18, and she was asking for 1927. That was well beyond her lifespan as well as her parents’. And unless she planned on murdering her grand- or great-grandparents, it should be safe. So he agreed.

“Right! Allons-y!” he shouted his catchphrase as he flicked a lever that started his ship’s flight.

Zepheera fell to her hands and knees at the sudden movement. Every time she tried to regain her footing, she was knocked back down by a large (well, from her perspective) turbulence. Meanwhile, the Doctor was dancing madly around the console, attempting to do six things at once.

Zepheera began to slide down the console and would’ve fallen off if the Doctor hadn’t swung his foot onto the console to hold down a lever, nearly killing Zepheera and saving her at the same time.

“Oi! Watch the feet!” Zepheera half-shouted, half-laughed.

“Sorry!” said the Doctor as he turned a crank and banged a bell with a mallet. One more lever flipped and the Tardis gave a great heave. Then it all stopped.

The Doctor removed his foot, leaving Zepheera sliding down the console with no handholds. She fell off the edge, but before she could fall more than a few inches, the Doctor rushed over and caught her in his open hand. She landed on her side and immediately sat up. She’d never been in anyone’s hand. She couldn’t have imagined it. It was a strange sensation that filled her chest as the Doctor straightened and held her out in front of him. Zepheera’s mind was struggling to decide if this new feeling was the most unpleasant thing imaginable or a surprising thrill, and these combating emotions pounded against her temples.

“Are you okay?” asked the Doctor, breaking her out of her thoughts.

“Y-yeah,” Zepheera gave herself a short once-over. Her limbs were fine, her spine was unhurt. “I’m okay.”

The Doctor nodded. “Good. Now! March eighth, 1927!” he exulted as he set her down on a more level part of the console. “Now, since we’re about to go out,” he began to fish through his pockets, “you’ll be needing this.” He pulled out a small, jagged key with a tiny device stuck to it. “It’s a TARDIS key.”

Zepheera took it and shook her slightly ruffled hair out of her face. She held it in both hands, examined it, and then looked up at the Doctor as he crossed the room.

“I’m guessing this does more than lock and unlock the TARDIS,” she called to him, setting it down.

“Right you are!” said the Doctor, who was putting on his now-dry overcoat. “It’s a perception filter. Doesn’t make you invisible, just unnoticed. So as long as you’re wearing it and you don’t draw attention to yourself, you might as well not be there.” He looked at her with a grin. “How’d you guess?”

“Well, I know you don’t intend me to use it,” she said as she untied her belt (which she didn’t truly need other than to carry her hook) “After all, I can’t reach the keyhole. Plus, this little doohickey has to do something useful.”

The Doctor chuckled. Zepheera smirked, then slipped the string-belt through the hole in the key and re-tied it around her waist. The key now hung at her right hip.

“Ready to go?” asked the Doctor, walking back to her.

Zepheera looked up at him and gave him an adventurous smile. She nodded once.

He smiled and held out a hand to her. She hesitantly got onto his hand, and he lifted her to his left shoulder. She hesitated once more, standing and nervously fingering her bag strap.

“Don’t you trust me?” The Doctor asked gently with a smile.

Zepheera smirked up at him. She _did_ trust him, but she wasn’t ready to say it out loud just yet.

“Are you going Disney on me or something?” she joked as she stepped gingerly onto his shoulder. It was more stable than his hand and she liked it better. She turned to sit down. “What’s next? Singing ‘I can show you the world’?” she continued.

The Doctor’s grin widened. “Oh, I can show you more than the world,” he said as he started toward the door. “I can show you all of space and time.”

“Show-off,” Zepheera muttered.

The Doctor smirked. “However,” he said as he stopped at the door to look at her seriously, “this is a one-trip deal. After this, I’m bringing you home. Hopefully in time for tea.”

The last time the Doctor had made this promise to someone, he hadn’t kept it. But he made a note to keep this one. Zepheera was young, but she was fragile and if he got too close…he couldn’t bear losing another. As her tiny head turned up to look at him, he could see her smirk melting. Then her gaze moved to the door. She nodded slowly. He noticed that she looked upset about something besides the short length of her trip, but he didn’t ask.

“Right then. Off we go.” he opened the door and stepped out into the past.

A cool breeze made Zepheera’s hair billow lightly. The air was cold, but she didn’t care. She breathed in the clean air – clean air! No more stuffy smog or noxious sewer fumes. So fresh! This made Zepheera smile.

The TARDIS had landed in a grassy field by a country roadside, which made Zepheera think they’d landed a few miles off course. She truly didn’t care. She crossed her legs and looked up at the Doctor as he closed the door, stuck his hands in his pockets and began following the roadside

“So, this is 1927,” she said, an impressed tone leaking through in her voice. For once, she wasn’t sore about being proved wrong. She was actually back in time!

“Well…” The Doctor tilted his head and his right hand crept to the back of his neck.

“What?” Zepheera looked up at him, a slight frown forming on her face.

“We might’ve gone a bit too far back.”

Zepheera raised an eyebrow. “How far is a bit?”

The Doctor inhaled deeply through his nose. “You can smell it. The air is _much_ too clean. Even the taste.” As if for effect, the Doctor flicked his tongue out once between his teeth, then seemed to play with it in his mouth trying to diffuse the taste. “About…seventeenth century, roughly.”

She turned to face the town they were slowly nearing. Before, she had though she knew exactly where and when they were. Now, her stomach grew cold with uncertainty. Okay, so they were in the sixteen-hundreds. But sixteen hundred and what?

“Still,” the Doctor began, this time with a bit of forced cheer in his voice, “that’s what makes these trips fun! The more you don’t know, the more there is to discover!” He smiled at Zepheera.

“I suppose that’s _one_ way to look at it. Another way of saying ‘we’re lost’ if you ask me,” she mumbled. She looked up at him. “Is this what you do all the time? Travel through time and space?”

“All the time,” he replied as they passed the first few houses that lined the town.

“Are you always…” she stopped and wondered if she should even ask.

“Always what?” His smile was half-gone.

“…Alone?” she finished hesitantly. 

The Doctor’s eyes returned to the front and he was silent a moment or two. Zepheera bit her lip. Had she said something wrong? Her gut twisted with a twinge of guilt and she shifted her feet uncomfortably. He had that look again; he was remembering something sad.

“Not always,” he answered quietly.

“I am,” she blurted before she could stop herself.  She regretted saying it when his head turned to her once more, maintaining that soft expression that barely masked sadness. “I’ve been alone a long time now,” she continued.

“What happened?”

“Hm?”

“You must’ve had family, friends. So what happened?” He didn’t ask in a way that sounded like he was interrogating her; more like melancholy curiosity.

“Long story,” she waved it off.

The Doctor nodded slowly. It was obvious that he was curious, but he didn’t press the matter.

A loud cart rumbled past, nearly hitting the Doctor; both he and Zepheera jumped in surprise. The Doctor’s smile returned and his slightly childish demeanor with it. “Here we are!” They seemed to have entered some kind of courtyard or square filled with bustling people and carts of goods being rolled off to somewhere every few feet. The Doctor seemed to be fascinated by everything, from the carts to the people walking about. Zepheera was curious as well, and she was almost relieved when her feeling returned.

The people walking around were mostly men, with the occasional woman arm-in-arm with her husband. The men wore stiff-collared petticoats and high-topped socks that ended at the cuffs of their breeches; the women wore those fancy, lacey dresses that made their waists look thin and their rears look large. Zepheera wondered whose idea that was and if they had been drinking when they’d thought of that idea.

A little boy ran in the Doctor’s path, laughing wildly and waving around a jacket larger than the one he wore as though it was a flag. An older boy, lacking his jacket and shouting indistinctively at the first boy followed. The Doctor stopped the second boy with a hand. “Excuse me, could you tell me what day it is?” he asked casually.

The boy looked up at him in annoyance, shivering a little in the chilly air. “Are you on the beer?” he demanded.

“Oi! Just answer the question.”

Zepheera noticed that the boy seemed to not notice her. She silently praised the Doctor’s perception whatever-it-was.

“It’s Christmas eve, of course! Year sixteen hundred and twenty-seven, if you’re too inebriated to remember that as well!” he added snidely.

“Oi, Robbie! Come and get it!” shouted the first boy, taunting the second with the prize in his hand.

“Maurice!” and he ran off.

“See, I told you,” said the Doctor to Zepheera, sounding cheery for whatever reason. “Only a few centuries off. And it’s Christmas! Fancy that! Don’t mind, do you?”

She shook her head. Truthfully, she had hoped for 1927 with a slight personal interest, but this was still very interesting.

As the Doctor walked along, Zepheera noted the darkness of the cloudy sky.

“Is it me, or is it getting late?”

“Right you are, Zepheera” he replied, looking up. “I suppose this is a good place to end this trip.” Hands in his pockets, he turned on his heel. “Time to go…” It was then that he saw further into the crowd two frantic-looking women that kept going up to passersby and asking them something. Both of them looked on the brink of tears and no one seemed to listen to either of them.

“Oo-ooh,” the Doctor mused. “Look.”

Zepheera craned her neck and saw them. She cocked an eyebrow. “Wonder what’s got their powdered wigs in a twist.”

“Shall we go find out?” the Doctor grinned mischievously at her.

“I think we shall,” she smirked.

So the Doctor walked over with long strides, stepping lightly on the balls of his feet. He approached the two women; he’d just opened his mouth to say hello when they both started pleading with him.

“Please sir, my children were stolen—“

“Can you help me?? My husband’s disapp—“

“Hold on, hold on!” The Doctor silenced them and held his hands up in a gesture for them to calm down. “I want to help you, and I can, but in order to do that, I need you both to keep calm. Okay?”

They both nodded. The woman asking about her husband had long dark hair tied in a braid that draped over her right shoulder; she had a prominent jaw and pleading pale blue eyes. The woman that had lost her children had large, sad chocolate-colored eyes and her blonde hair was pulled back and fell down to her shoulders in several ringlets. Both of them, Zepheera noticed, looked unnaturally slim, but she remembered that this was the seventeenth century – most likely England – and the women were wearing painful corsets. She wondered how they managed to breathe.

She blinked when she realized the Doctor was moving; the women were leading him away from the crowd and down a street. She looked up at his face. He was still grinning, but not with his entire face like usual.  She wondered what he was thinking.

They were led to a house wedged in-between other houses; it was tall but not very wide. As they entered, the dark haired one offered to make tea and disappeared into the further rooms of the house. The blond led the Doctor (and Zepheera) into the sitting room, and then went to join her companion.

“Okay,” said Zepheera, standing up on the Doctor’s shoulder and stage-whispering in his ear. “I’ll be investigation, you’ll be interrogation.”

“What’re you talking about?” said the Doctor quietly as he casually looked at the sketches on the fireplace mantle.

“You interrogate the humans, and I’ll do a bit of snooping.” Zepheera rubbed her hands together in anticipation.

“What’ll you be looking for?” the Doctor inquired, sounding curious.

“This house has to belong to one of them, and where there’s humans, there’s borrowers. We see everything.” With that, she hopped off the Doctor’s shoulder, fell a few feet, and then ended up sliding the rest of the way down along the hem of his overcoat and landing softly on the hardwood floor.

“Don’t go too far,” the Doctor called after her. She gave him a thumbs-up and ran off, disappearing behind the bookshelf.

As the Doctor watched Zepheera leave, he wondered if he should be worried about her alone. He didn’t know anything about her family; he’d just sort of stolen her by accident. If anything happened to her, they would never know and he’d never be able to tell them.

He was broken out of his reverie when the two women came back. The blond woman carried in a tray of cakes and the other brought in the teapot. The Doctor politely took a cup and ate a bite-sized cake when offered, while neither of the women seemed to have any appetite at all.

“So,” he began, setting down his teacup, “Introductions!” He grinned widely. “I’m the Doctor. And you are?”

“Agitha,” said the blond.

“Helga,” said the dark-haired woman.

“Lovely to meet you both,” said the Doctor pleasantly. “Now that we all know each other, we can get down to business.” He leaned forward, rested his wrists on his knees and intertwined his fingers. “What happened to the pair of you?”

Agitha and Helga exchanged nervous glances as though neither of them wanted to go first. Agitha took a deep breath and began speaking.


	5. Of Christmas and Borrowing Season

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Revised 3/15/2016

Chapter 4: Of Christmas and Borrowing Season

Zepheera took a deep breath the moment she was out of the Doctor’s sights and stood still a moment. She didn’t know what to expect; she was only moments away from meeting borrowers from the seventeenth century! This was a notion that took her a moment to wrap her head around. She gave herself a good shake, telling herself to snap out of it and to buck up, and she strode determinedly into the mouse-hole a few inches away.

Two steps into the hole, Zepheera expected a makeshift ladder of staples or pins or even some stairs that led to the inner depths of the inside of the walls. Instead, there was…nothing, just…nothing.

Her brow furrowed, she looked off to the left and right. She saw no sources of light, no crudely-made lifts, nothing to show any signs of intelligent life.

Could it be that…no… With newfound determination, Zepheera began walking to the right and into the darkness.

Normally, she’d have some source of dull light to aid her, but the walls were thicker than back in the present, and she was left stumbling about in pitch-black darkness. She hoped she wasn’t making too much noise.

She did this throughout the entire house, and she found no borrowers, not even one, and this gave her a wave of nauseous worry.

Back in the sitting room, the Doctor tried not to let the skittering in the walls that only his ears were keen enough to hear distract him from the women’s stories.

Before, he thought their stories would be similar, but now that they were being told they were entirely different.

Agitha was Helga’s older sister, a widow and a single mother. Her children were stolen from her home quickly, and she moved in with Helga in her distress. Helga, however, had just married two years before and her husband worked at the shipyard across town. A week ago, she said, he went missing. She searched for him for days, but neither her nor his colleagues found him. They suspected he stowed away on one of the bigger merchant ships, but Helga wouldn’t believe it for a second. He wasn’t the type of man to run off without reason, warning, or goodbye, she insisted on this.

Many tears were shed by these women, and the Doctor comforted them, sympathizing their losses. Once they’d calmed down, he asked Helga if he could see her husband’s bedroom (after flashing them his psychic paper) She led him up a flight of stairs to a room adjacent to them and the women retreated to the sitting room.

As soon as they were downstairs, the Doctor pulled out his Sonic Screwdriver and did a quick sweep of the room. He found nothing out of the ordinary, so he went to the desk. A book that looked an awful lot like a journal caught his attention He lifted it and flicked through it until the writing stopped. He re-read the last page.

_Happened again. This time, it was Mr. Watson from pier 5. Same as all the others – he was led by two men onto one of the Jamestown bound ships and didn’t return. Investigation is a terrifying thought, and everyone else thinks the same. Something must be done. For all I know, Mr. Watson is dead or worse_

The writing suspiciously stopped there, and the Doctor snapped the book shut. He was wondering about what it meant when that noise in the wall sounded again. The shuffling. Wondering if it was Zepheera or another borrower, he followed the sound to a spot on the wall near the floor. He knelt down and knocked lightly on the dry wall.

Zepheera was wandering aimlessly at this point. She was looking for an exit and had gone too far to go back. She turned a corner, congratulating herself on not tripping once up the steep incline she’d just scaled, when up ahead she saw—no, could it be? A light. A way out! She sped up her walk, and then tripped over a crack in the wood. So much for her streak.

She stood and dusted herself off. Her heart jumped into her throat in surprise when something knocked on the other side of the wall. She slid her feet toward where she’d heard it, and then pressed her hands and an ear to the inside of the wall.

“Doctor?” She felt stupid that she’d said it; there was no way he could’ve heard her. So it surprised her when he responded “Meet me in here.”

So Zepheera made her way to the mouse hole, which happened to be behind and underneath a grandfather clock. The loud (from her perspective) ticks made her ears temporarily ring. She quickly moved away from it, her head spinning a bit, toward the middle of the room; she was stopped by something solid, which, she realized after turning around, was the Doctor’s shoe.

“Careful,” she heard him say. She didn’t need to look at him to hear the smirk in his voice that his face no doubt mirrored. She rolled her eyes and turned to face him. He was sitting in the chair at the desk, foot extended.

“Maybe you should watch where you put your feet,” she replied snidely.

The Doctor chuckled, moved his foot back, and then leaned forward to hold a hand out to her. She stepped onto it and he lifted her to the desk.

“Did you have any luck?” He asked her as she sat down on the wood of the desk.

Zepheera’s eyes rolled to the ceiling and she blew out her cheeks as she thought. “Oh! I got nicked by a rat,” she extended her left leg to show wide scratches a bit more serious than a nick, scabbing over and slowly disappearing. “The ground floor is full of them and I left my weapon on the TARDIS. Just managed to get away and up here.”

The Doctor raised his eyebrows and his grin disappeared. Blimey, he thought, the danger a borrower could get into! “Well, shouldn’t you warn the others?”

“Doctor—“Zepheera’s face fell, but she was cut off by the Doctor, who was in mid-rant.

“Tell them to prepare? Or get out? Or—“

“Doctor! She snapped, silencing him. “There _were_ no others.” She couldn’t quite mask the slight heartbrokenness in her voice.

One of the Doctor’s eyebrows dropped in confusion. “What? But you said—“

“I know what I said!” Zepheera stood and began to pace nervously. “There should be at least _some_ borrowers around. I expected by now we’d be _everywhere_. But there’s just _no one._ ”

“Calm down,” the Doctor told her gently. “We’ll figure this out.”

Zepheera stopped moving, sighed and shook her head. “It’s fine. They may have just emigrated, that’s all.” This was more to herself than to the Doctor, and before he could ask what that meant, she turned to him and asked, “What about you? What did you find out?”

Disappointed that the subject changed already, the Doctor repeated the sisters’ stories.

“And?” said Zepheera when he’d finished.

“And what?”

“What do you think?” By then, she’d taken a seat atop an ink bottle.

“Well,” he began again, leaning back in his chair and propping his feet up on the desk a ways away from Zepheera, “Time’s right for Agitha, but not for Helga.”

Zepheera nodded like she understood which she didn’t. “What do you mean, time’s not right?”

The Doctor lowered his feet and did the same with his voice, as though anyone could be listening in.

“Some points in history are fixed and can never be changed. Some are in flux, meaning they _can_ be changed and could go one way or another. Now, in 1627, children were kidnapped and shipped to the American colonies to increase the population. But grown men? That’s unheard of.”

“So what’s Helga’s husband been taken for?”

Then the Doctor spoke the last three words she had expected him to say.

“I don’t know.”

Zepheera’s forehead creased with the raising of her eyebrows. “Oh…We’re going to find out, though, right?”

“Oh! Of course!” The Doctor’s mood lightened and he said this as though it were a given.

“Great!” Zepheera grinned excitedly. “When’re we le – leav—“she yawned in the middle of her sentence, realizing only then how tired she was. The Doctor noticed this, and then glanced at the window. It was already pitch-dark out. He sighed.

“This was meant to be a quick trip,” he mused, turning back to Zepheera. “…but I suppose we can stay the night.”

 

Helga let the Doctor spend the night in the spare bedroom upstairs, still ignorant of Zepheera’s presence. The Doctor fished through his pockets and found an old but clean handkerchief that a lady named Gwen had given him in 1420. He and Zepheera folded it and fashioned a sort of mattress. She’d use her jacket as a blanket and her arm as a pillow. Not exactly five-star, but Zepheera loved it; it was the most comfortable thing she’d slept on in a long time. They set it up in the windowsill by the bed.

While she fell asleep quickly, the Doctor sat up in bed re-reading a good Agatha Christie novel. Around 11:48, his concentration was broken by Zepheera. She was mumbling in her sleep. He glanced at her; she was tossing and turning violently, so much so that her jacket had been thrown off her body and half of it hung over the  windowsill edge; it was as though she were having a nightmare.

He shrugged it off as such, adjusted his spectacles (which he truly didn’t need) and went back to his book.

Then Zepheera’s mumblings became clearer, forming words and half-words. The Doctor dismissed those as well, until she started to say a word that nearly stopped his hearts.

“Ga…Galli…”

Eyes wide, the Doctor turned to her and snapped his book shut. If she was going to say what he thought she was going to say…But that was impossible.

“Galli…”

“Galli-what?” the Doctor almost demanded, though she remained asleep. He moved closer to the windowsill, half-hoping that he had misheard.

“Galli…Gall—No!” She woke with a start, sitting up quickly. She was breathing like she’d just run a mile.

“Galli-what?? What were you saying?” He was sitting across from her, basically towering over her.

Zepheera gasped, as though just then becoming aware of the Doctor’s presence. Her eyes went wide as she looked up at him in confusion. “What? I-I don’t—“

“Zepheera, you _need_ to tell me!” He leaned in much closer to her, demanding an answer.

“S-stop!” she pleaded, backing away from his approach until her back was pressed hard against the glass.

There was a pause. Complete silence.

For the first time, the Doctor saw real terror in Zepheera’s eyes. And worse than that, terror _he’d_ caused. He was horrified at himself and he drew back in shock.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I-I didn’t...I shouldn’t have…” He swallowed thickly past the lump of emotion in his throat. His own words echoed at the edge of his hearing, the promise he had made her. _You don’t have to be afraid._ It had seemed such an easy thing to swear to her. And now…

Zepheera nodded in acknowledgement of his apology and slowly peeled herself from the window. The Doctor saw she was trembling a bit and rubbing her arms nervously.

“Are you alright?” asked the Doctor, exuding great concern. He felt terrible, and he hoped the fright hadn’t done her any physical damage as well.

“Fine,” she said shortly, quietly. “Just a bit cold. The window ‘n all.” She shifted her feet so that her knees were a little closer to her, and then turned to stare almost vacantly out the window.

The Doctor bit his lip, wishing she’d meet his gaze. His eyes fell on her tiny jacket still lying on the windowsill. Gently and delicately, he pinched its fabric, lifted it, and then turned his palm upright so that it lay across four of his fingers; He held it out to Zepheera.

She had been lost in thought and only noticed that the Doctor’s reflection in the glass had moved. She turned to see her jacket in his hand, and then her eyes flicked up to the Doctor’s apologetic smile. The corners of her own mouth moved the tiniest bit upward and she took the coat, wrapping it around herself.

“Thanks,” she said, her smile widened. It faded a little as her thoughts reverted back and her head turned back to face forward, staring into nothing.

The Doctor was relieved that she didn’t hate him – or even worse, was still afraid of him – and he crossed his legs. “Nightmares?” he wondered.

“No,” she replied softly after a short moment. “It’s strange. Most of the time, my dreams are _wonderful_. And yet, I wake up screaming. And I don’t know why.”

“What do you dream of?” the Doctor asked curiously.

Zepheera let out a deep breath. “I…I’ve seen things. Other places, impossible worlds, in my dreams.”

This piqued the Doctor’s curiosity. “Like what? Describe them to me,” he said gently.

“Well…” Zepheera chuckled and smiled weakly. She turned to face the Doctor. “There was this one where I was flying on a little floating bit of earth over a whole continent the color of hair.”

“Whose hair?”

“Anyone’s hair!” Zepheera was grinning broadly, her eyes full of wonder and excitement. She lifted her hands and gestured in the air areas she remembered. “Black here, auburn here, ginger, light brown, dirty blond…” She trailed off.

“The planet Cromia,” The Doctor mumbled under his breath. Zepheera seemed like she hadn’t heard him.

“And once,” she continued, “I was standing among turquoise grass, and it was twilight out—at least I think so—and the sky…was _deep_ violet, even darker than my eyes, and the clouds were the same color as the grass…”

“Randalion,” the Doctor recalled.

Zepheera snapped back to reality. “Sorry, what?”

“Nothing. Go on.”

She smiled again. “It’s weird, though. All those dreams, I’ve never had any of them more than once. Except the last two.”

The Doctor remembered Zepheera’s mumblings.

“Tell me. Describe it.”

“Well, I _definitely_ didn’t mind the repeat. Oh, it was _beautiful_. Red grass cut up to my waist…beautiful red, snowy mountains, and some kind of citadel or temple in a sort of bubble of glass. Enormous, it was. I still can barely wrap my head around how _huge._ And the sky! Oh! It was a sort of orange, wonderful color, and two suns. Two! Can you imagine?”

The Doctor looked rather nauseous but he nodded.

“There were trees to my right in the distance, and the way the suns’ light hit them, they caught fire.”

“It only looks like they’re on fire,” the Doctor interjected, unable to stop himself. “The leaves are silver and reflect the light.”

Zepheera looked up at him. “You’ve been there?”

“Been there, I…” The Doctor’s eyes wandered to the window—or more specifically, the star-filled sky. “…I grew up there.”

“ _That’s_ your planet?” asked Zepheera incredulously. “It’s so _beautiful_.”

“Yes,” the Doctor replied quietly, “it was.”

“Was?” Zepheera repeated, facing her whole body to him now and crossing her legs. “What happened to it?”

The Doctor, having broken eye contact after the mention of his former home, managed to meet Zepheera's gaze. It was difficult to resist the urge to tell her, especially when she had that curious, ready-to-listen look. And besides that, after nearly frightening her to death over it, he felt he owed her. So he sighed, laced his fingers and began his story.

“The Time Lords went to war with a race called the Daleks. An entire race of beings that thought they were superior to all things, whose only existence was to create a pure universe by exterminating everything not pure Dalek. Those who survived to talk about it called it the Last Great Time War, and _I_ had to stop it. In the end, the Daleks were destroyed. But so were the Time Lords. I’m the last of my kind.”

Zepheera processed all this a moment, opened her mouth to say something, and then changed her mind and closed it.

“I…I’m sorry,” she managed to say.

The Doctor locked eyes with the small girl in front of him. The way she had said it, she related to him somehow. He briefly considered asking, but he knew she’d talk about it if she felt like it.

“What was it called?” she asked after a moment. “The planet, I mean.”

The Doctor’s brow rose. He thought he’d mentioned it already ( _she_ certainly had before she woke up) but evidently not. He opened his mouth to say, hesitating briefly. Letting out a long breath to release the pent-up tension in his chest, he smiled the saddest of smiles at the borrower before him.

“Its name was Gallifrey.”

Zepheera’s heartbeat quickened as she matched the name with the dreams. It was perfect, how beautiful they both were.

“Sounds magnificent,” she beamed, leaning forward on her elbows.

The Doctor gave a short chuckle. “It really was,” he said thickly.

In the distance a bell began to toll, quickly at first in groups of four before slowing down and counting off twelve long rings. Midnight. Both the Doctor’s and Zepheera turned to face the window, waiting almost reverently for the clock to become quiet once more.

“It’s funny,” Zepheera mused. “The humans call it Christmas, and they think that it represents something religious or magical.”

“What do you call it then?” wondered the Doctor.

“We call it Borrowing Season.” She turned to smile up at him. “It doesn’t hold any magical purpose or religious meaning. But for three weeks, while the humans are celebrating this ‘Christmas’ us borrowers get rich pickings.”

The Doctor chuckled. “I can imagine. All those random bits and bobs lying around, with everyone too busy to notice anything missing.”

“Those fancy little chocolates with the creams inside. Mm, those are delicious!” Zepheera licked her lips, as though she could taste them now. But she hadn’t had one in so long; the taste was foreign to her now.

“Better than what _I_ do at Christmas,” the Doctor said.

“Why? What do _you_ do?”

“ _Well_ , mainly, save the universe from utter destruction.”

Zepheera laughed quietly. “Sounds like fun.”

The Doctor looked back down at her, a thoughtful smirk playing across his lips. “It is, actually.”

There was a moment when the two of them just sat there looking at each other, enjoying the other’s company.

Inhaling deeply, the Doctor began talking with forced cheer as he settled into bed. “Well, we’d better get to sleep. We’ve got a big day ahead.”

“Right!” Zepheera, it seemed, was just as eager for the morning as her Time Lord counterpart.  “G’night.” She turned over, lay down and covered her torso with her jacket. Her eyes shut immediately, but she didn’t properly fall asleep for another hour.


	6. Khardenia

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the delay, there was stuff and...shenanigans.

Chapter 5: Khardenia

“So!” shouted Zepheera over the noise of the Tardis in flight, “We’re heading for Virginia, yeah?”

The Doctor, madly turning a crank and holding down two levers (one with his hand and the other with his foot), gave the small girl atop his shoulder a look that showed he didn’t expect her to say _that._

“When did I tell you that?” he half-laughed.

Rolling her eyes, she replied, “You didn’t! I may not’ve attended school, but I know how to read, especially journals, and where Jamestown is!”

“Oh, Zepheera, I like you!” The Doctor hit a bell with a mallet several times. She laughed in reply.

Her grip on the Doctor’s suit fabric tightened as the Tardis landed. Exchanging adventurous glances, the two of them left the police box.

A light snow was falling, much to Zepheera’s bewilderment. She hadn’t seen real, proper snow for _years_.

“Ah!” the Doctor exclaimed, “smell that Atlantic air! Jamestown, Virginia, 1627. Christmas day. It’s _beautiful!_ ”

“Absolutely…” Zepheera agreed. “…Shame we’re not here to sightsee, eh?”

“Right!” The Doctor pulled out his Sonic and began scanning for alien tech. He started walking in the direction the signal he picked up was coming from.

“What’s that thing?” Zepheera pointed at it.

“Sonic Screwdriver,” answered the Doctor shortly.

“Got it.”

“That was quick,” the Doctor noted.

“What was?”

“Well, normally, people ask, ‘What the hell’s a Sonic Screwdriver?’ or something.”

Zepheera chuckled. “You know what I dream. You think after a lifetime of that, I wouldn’t believe anything? Especially if I believe that you’re a time-travelling alien with a box that’s bigger on the inside.”

“I thought it was smaller on the outside,” he smirked.

Zepheera rolled her eyes, chuckling.

The Doctor grinned at her. Doing a double-take, he stopped walking and his smile melted when he noticed something.

“Zepheera, when did you get your weapon back?”

She glanced over her shoulder. As well as her bag and hook, she’d brought the crudely made machete strapped to her back. “When you were setting the coordinates on the Tardis. I thought you weren’t looking,” she admitted.

“We’ve been over this.”

“Look, I know you hate weapons, but what if I get into trouble? What if _you_ do?”

“Then you can come and save me empty-handed.” The Doctor turned his screwdriver back on and continued walking. Neither of them spoke for a while and Zepheera began to worry that she’d made him angry at her. After getting a taste of his accidental temper, she certainly didn’t want to be on the other end if his intended wrath.

“We’re getting close,” the Doctor mumbled at last. She was about to ask what exactly they were getting close to when she spotted the abandoned-looking warehouse.

“Glamorous,” she said sarcastically.

The Doctor ignored her and started walking faster. As they neared it, Zepheera started rubbing her temple.

“Starting to get a headache,” she informed him in case this wasn’t normal.

“There’s a large perception filter around it,” he responded.

“Around what?” She lowered her hand and peered up at the building before them.

“Alien spacecraft.” The Doctor gestured with his Sonic, as though this was explained to him by the little device.

“So,” she regarded the size of the building, “it’s not even a very big ship. And that’s saying something coming from me.” A little bit of warmth rose up inside Zepheera’s chest when the Doctor’s mouth formed the smallest smile. He pocketed the Sonic, glanced at Zepheera, who nodded indicating she too was ready, and stepped through the warehouse like a hologram.

On the other side, they came upon a large, futuristic-looking hunk of metal jutting out of the ground. Both of them furrowed their brows. Judging by the two-foot-wide gap of charred earth surrounding it, there was much more to it underground.

“It’s all…buried. It must’ve been here for months. There can’t possibly be anyone still in there. Can there?” Zepheera tilted her head back to look at the Doctor.

“Well,” the Doctor stepped forward and touched a hand to the ship, “you’re right, it has been here for months – several months at that. If there had been any survivors, they’d’ve made a few repairs by then. Which means—“ He took out his Sonic and began to pace quickly around the circumference of the machine, buzzing all the while; after a few feet a circular hatch appeared and he climbed in. He dropped to the floor – falling sideways. The sudden shift of weight made Zepheera instinctively clench the Doctor’s coat and she managed to stay on his shoulder. “The artificial gravity still works.” The Doctor stood, brushed off his elbows, and then checked to make sure that Zepheera was alright. She shook the hair from in front of her face, righted herself on the Doctor’s shoulder, and gave him a thumbs-up just as the opening closed and left them in the dim light.

The two of them were in a long, metallic corridor. It was rather dark, apart from the dull, flickering lights on the ceiling every few meters. Some of the bulbs hung from a single wire and swung carelessly from side to side. A few wires poked out of the walls and showered sparks.

“They’ve had some cowboys in here,” muttered the Doctor. He fished through his pockets and found a torch, flicking it on. He headed down the corridor.

“This place is _huge_ ,” Zepheera gaped at the lengths of the corridors. As the Doctor turned a corner, she wondered aloud, “What could’ve crashed here?”

“Well, as far as planets of origin go, I’m down to about seven theories.” The Doctor’s torch flicked everywhere, paying attention to the tiniest of details as he walked. “Ships of this kind come in kits, sold in bazaars and space markets. Could belong to anyone. But usually, whoever owns it’ll remodel or redecorate it to represent their planet.”

“What, so, this basically came from an outer-space garage sale?”

“Well, that’s one way to put it,” the Doctor smirked.

The deeper into the ship they went, the better it looked; fewer things around were broken and even the finish on the metal appeared more refined. They came upon a rather decorative-looking door, which opened automatically when he approached, and this seemed to interest the Doctor the most. “Three theories,” he amended. The next corridor was quite short and there was another door five meters away, this time with an insignia on it; it was the strangest symbol that Zepheera had seen since the Chinese character. “One. Gharkonian.” The Doctor stopped just shy of the distance needed for the door to detect his presence.

“Is that good or bad?” asked Zepheera, who wasn’t nearly as well-versed in planets outside the Solar System as the Doctor was.

“Depends on the Gharkonian,” was the Doctor’s simple reply as he strode forward. What they came across in the next room stopped him in his tracks.

There were people – Earth people – by the dozens, all working, welding, molding, repairing, managing. They seemed to be building (or rebuilding) something, but whatever it was they were doing they didn’t seem to be aware of it. They all had glazed-over looks in their eyes and their faces were emotionless.

“These are _humans_.” The Doctor frowned deeply, and Zepheera could almost feel the anger slowly bubbling up inside him.

“No, they’re not.”

The Doctor looked at her with a raised eyebrow. “How do you know?”

“Elbows and ankles, remember? If they were human, I’d know.”

A man passed the Doctor carrying a heavy load of metal scraps, and the Doctor followed him, scanning the back of his head. The man didn’t mind; he was hardly aware of it. In fact, none of them seemed to know that the Doctor or Zepheera were even present.

“You’re right. They’re not human. Not anymore. They’ve been genetically altered, so their DNA is completely different now. There’s also a tiny microchip attached to his brain stem—“

“Which is probably what controls his mind,” Zepheera finished. “They must _all_ have them. Mindless zombies doing someone’s dirty work.” The Doctor looked at her with a raised eyebrow.

“You are _very_ brilliant,” he remarked.

She shrugged and smiled in a playful manner. “I try.”

The Doctor smiled a bit in return, but then his face reverted to his distasteful – bordering on enraged – expression.

“You can’t just, I dunno, Sonic the chip, shut it off?” Zepheera wondered.

“The chip’s too far embedded into their brains. If I did, I wouldn’t just shut down the chip. I’d shut down their entire nervous system.”

“They’d die,” Zepheera whispered in realization. Even with her dislike of humans, she was horrified by the thought of several dozen dead humans.

“Who goes there?” said a sharp female voice from beyond the door in the far corner. This and the clicking of heels alerted them to someone coming. The door hissed as it opened and in strolled tall, thin, beautiful woman with long dark hair in a sleek, simple yet revealing black dress with matching high heels and lipstick. Her anatomy was surprisingly humanoid in Zepheera’s opinion, a feeling she had only felt once with the Doctor. Everything except her skin, which was crimson in color; she also seemed to have natural markings on her skin, swirling designs up and down her arms and snaking up her neck, a deep burnt mahogany in color. Her eyes, as well, were an exception, being yellow and rather feline. She had a look of confusion and distrust on her face and held in her hand a long metal rod, the end of which sparked with electricity.

The Doctor’s expression became hard as steel and he pushed past the zombie-workers to get closer to this woman, whom he obviously recognized and didn’t like at all, to which the woman raised her weapon higher.

“Lady Khardenia,” the Doctor growled, “What are the chances?”

Khardenia’s lip curled and her grip on her weapon tightened.  “Who are you? And how do you know my name?”

“Oh, do you not remember me? All those years ago, back when you were Lady Khardenia des Rivedrid: Lord Mistress of the Gharkonian Embassy? You were going to enslave the mid- and lower-classes just like you enslaved all these humans, remember? How time flies when one is banished!”

A look of realization crossed Lady Khardenia’s face, followed by a cat-like coyness.

“Doctor.” Her voice had changed to a more seductive tone and she clicked a switch on her weapon; the electricity switched off and she tossed it onto the floor. “It’s been a long time. You’ve changed your face, I didn’t recognize you.”

“Well, now you know that you’re in very big trouble, Khardenia. Taking control over the minds of innocent people on any planet is illegal by decree of the Shadow Proclamation, as I’m sure you recall.” The Doctor’s voice was dangerously quiet and suddenly, to Zepheera, the previous night seemed like the Doctor’s pleasant side.

“I fear you not, Doctor. Nor do I fear your meaningless threats. Even after you somehow managed to undermine my power in the Gharkonian Embassy. As for these _humans_ , they’re officially my property now and I’ll do with them what I please. And seeing as _I_ also own this entire ship, do you know what that makes you, Doctor?”

She stepped forward, nearly eye-to-eye with the Doctor, who didn’t even give her the satisfaction of an answer. Zepheera tried not to move a muscle, fearing the slightest movement would give her away. Faster than either of them could see, Khardenia snatched the Screwdriver from the Doctor’s hands and, before he could protest, touched the tip of a long finger to his forehead. This seemed to paralyze him and his features froze in an expression of outrage and slight surprise.

“A trespasser.”

He suddenly screamed in pain, a sound nearly unbearable for Zepheera, who clamped her hands over her ears.  What was she doing to him?? The next thing Zepheera knew, she was falling to the floor. She bit her tongue to stop herself from screaming, and she landed on something soft. Turning over, she realized it was the Doctor.

The Doctor was five inches high.

“Doctor!” she sat up and rolled him onto his back. He was twitching a little and moaning in pain, proving he was alive. Looking up, Zepheera saw Khardenia admiring the Doctor’s Screwdriver and sliding it into a crease in her dress. It made no bulge to indicate the thing was there at all.

“You change him back, you overgrown witch!” Zepheera screamed at the top of her lungs.

Khardenia looked down at her, a smirk forming on her face.

“Zepheera…no…” the Doctor groaned, stretching a hand toward her. She ignored him, her gaze locked upon the giantess of a woman before her.

“Well, well, Doctor,” mused Khardenia, “you have a little friend.” She bent down and took Zepheera in her fist, pinning her arms to her sides. “Well, I know just what to do with her. And as for you, Doctor. You’re coming with me.” She lifted the Doctor by the back of his overcoat (seeing as he couldn’t exactly struggle) and strolled triumphantly down the corridor.

Zepheera turned her neck (the only thing she _could_ move) to look desperately at the Doctor. He, with apparent effort, lolled his head to gaze back at her. His eyelids looked heavy and he seemed to be just barely clinging to consciousness. His lips formed the words, “I’m sorry, “and his head drooped as he lost consciousness.

“Doctor!”

“Oh, shut up,” the woman lifted Zepheera to her eyes. “I could just kill you now, but I _choose_ to let you live.”

“Why? What d’you want _me_ for?”

“Oh, silly, silly little earthling. What fun is killing the Doctor if you can’t watch it?”

Zepheera struggled, but Khardenia’s grasp tightened. With a rather sinister grin, she strutted into a room lined with monitors and computers and other sorts of random rubbish. She casually dropped the Doctor into a large mason jar sitting atop a desk and left him alone, continuing down the next corridor with Zepheera.

“Into the closet with the other rejects you go.” A small square hole opened in the wall and Zepheera was tossed into it.

She never screamed, never uttered a sound. She just fell and landed hard on her back, losing consciousness.


	7. Caught...again

Chapter 6: Caught…Again

 “She’s coming to!” The young voice sounded so far away.

“Come on then, love, up you get.”

Zepheera groaned as she was sat up by someone. Opening her eyes, she saw someone else’s light pink eyes gazing back comfortingly. She blinked out the blurriness in her vision and the figure above her focused. It was a middle-aged ginger woman with a warm smile and eyes. Zepheera shot to her feet. The woman was her size, but that wasn’t her concern at the moment.

“How long was I out?” she asked at once.

“Calm down, dear, you’ve been injured—“

“How long?!” Zepheera demanded.

“Er, I don’t know, thirty minutes?”

“Oh, No! Doctor!” Zepheera turned around and began pounding her fists on the metal wall behind her, all the while yelling for the Doctor.

“There’s no way out,” said a different voice, a male voice this time. “We’ve tried.”

Zepheera whirled around and noticed that it wasn’t just her and the woman. There were about eleven tiny people of all ages, all ginger. The youngest was a girl of about twelve and the oldest was a man of about forty-five, the owner of the voice from before. They looked human, but they didn’t feel human to Zepheera, and their eyes were all uncommon colors like bright yellow or blue-green and so on. They were spread out in their own little clusters throughout the room, which was about four feet square, although they seemed quite familiar with each other. Like they’d been shut in here for a while.

“What is this place? Why are you all here?” Zepheera inquired.

“She enslaved us,” said the man, who seemed to be the leader. “She performed surgery on us, inserting a mechanism in our brains to force us to do her will.”

Zepheera approached him. “But…That should be physically impossible to break away from. How come you’re not being controlled now?”

“We don’t know,” said a teenage boy, coming to join their little group. “We just…started thinking again. We broke free and tried to get out.”

“But she punished us and changed us and trapped us here,” the man finished. “That’s all we are to her. Rubbish. Failed experimentations.”

Zepheera rubbed the back of her neck as she took all this in. “Do…does she ever feed you?” she had noticed how malnourished they all seemed.

“The longest any of us has been trapped here is four months. She drops in a tiny scrap of old meat in here once a week,” said the woman. “The last time she has done this was four days ago.”

Zepheera sat down cross-legged and unshouldered her bag. A few of the more curious people turned their heads and craned to look. Some of them even got up. The little girl came right up to her, peering over her shoulder as she undid the latch on her bag and pulled out a peanut. At this point, everyone got up and flocked around her. Things were hectic for a moment, but in the end they all waited patiently as Zepheera handed out bits of peanut to each of them. Everyone got seconds, finishing off the peanut. And Zepheera still had plenty in her bag. Afterward, they all sat in one (relatively) large group. Bellies full, moods were lightened marginally and delightful conversations arose amongst them. Zepheera heard the names of everyone, but had a bit of trouble remembering them. The leader’s name was Thomas, the pink-eyed woman’s name was Katrina, and the little girl’s name was Lea.

Later, she sat apart from them, resting her back against the wall. None of her thoughts strayed far from the Doctor for a long time after that, and most of the tiny people knew to leave her alone with her thoughts. That is, until the same teenage boy from before sat next to her. His ginger hair was slicked back and his clothes were rather tattered.

“Thank you,” he said simply.

Zepheera shrugged. “It was just a peanut.”

“No, really, thanks. You’ve given us all a hope that we haven’t had in a long time. But, you never said: Who are you?”

“Name’s Zepheera. And it was…Zachary, right?”

“That’s right.” He smiled widely.

Zepheera nodded. “So…How long have you been here?”

Zachary broke eye contact with her and was silent a moment. His smile had devolved into a blended expression of thoughtfulness and anger.

“About two months, I suppose,” he answered finally.

Silence broke out between them, in which Zepheera searched the boy’s face a moment, opened her mouth to say something, and then closed it having changed her mind. She decided on a way to rephrase what she wanted to say. “How does she get you?”

Zachary turned back to her. “You mean, how did she capture all of us?” When she nodded in reply, he let out a long breath. “Individually. Not at first, though. I heard that when the ship first crashed here, dozens of people flocked around to investigate. She couldn’t let them leave, so she captured them. She killed half of them, just to make them afraid, and then decided that they could actually be useful. So she kept them, changed them, used them. After that, it was just a matter of recruiting more without attracting too much attention.”

“That’s why she favored the shipyard,” Zepheera thought out loud. “The perfect cover. People come overseas to visit or move here, or someone takes a holiday overseas, but they don’t make it home.” She chuckled quietly – and slightly bitterly – at this new concept. “She may be alien, but she’s a brilliant one. She comprehends the lunar cycle’s effect on the tide and the unpredictability of the ocean and the primitive nature of the – “She stopped short when she realized she was saying all this aloud—sounding rather like the Doctor, she noticed—and that Zachary was staring at her strangely. She tore her eyes away from his incredulous ones and kept quiet until he went on.

“People kept coming in, but the amount of people slowed to about three a day. And then one a day.”

“But why? What’s it all for? What does she need all those people for?” Zepheera was staring him in the eye at this point.

Zachary closed his eyes, and then clenched them as though trying hard to remember. “When you’re being…controlled by _her_ …” Zepheera had noticed that none of these people called Lady Khardenia by name, and if she came up in conversation, she was only referred to as ‘her’. “…it’s not like there’s someone else in your head doing what it wants. It changes your mind, makes you want to do the things _she_ wants. It represses emotions as well. Even so, you’re not entirely aware of what you’re doing. It’s hard…hard to remember.”

“What _do_ you remember?” She leaned forward, hanging on the tension that filled the imaginary bubble of air surrounding them.

“We…we were…building some sort of machine.” Zachary was really concentrating now, and it was almost as though it was hurting him. It was evident to Zepheera that that was all she was going to get out of him, so she decided to stop prying. She laid a light hand on his shoulder and his eyes shot open. Small beads of perspiration had formed on his forehead and he immediately wiped his brow with his sleeve. Zepheera offered him an encouraging smile and removed her hand. He was okay now and she knew it.

After a few silent moments, Zachary scooted over and sat in front of Zepheera.

“So, this ‘Doctor’ you were shouting for…How long have you known him?”

“Not long, really,” said Zepheera, leaning back against the cool metal of the wall. “It just sort of happened. An accident of a kind. He said it was just a short trip and he’d be taking me right home. But he can’t, he just… can’t.”

She said all this expressing a mixture of emotions, the last of which was undeterminable by Zachary. He sort of looked at her in confusion, and then shook it off and returned to his originally intended subject. “But can he help us? Can he save us?”

Zepheera let out a long breath and stared into Zachary’s burnt orange eyes. She was reminded of – and the similarity was so uncanny, she was amazed she hadn’t made the connection sooner – the Gallifreyan sky. The sky that she’d never see in person. The sky that the Doctor grew up with. She laid a hand on Zachary’s shoulder once more.

“Absolutely,” she said determinedly.

At that moment, a sound that was a sort of _pang_ crossed with the sound of a gong rang through the room.

“What was that?”

“Shift change,” replied Zachary, standing. Zepheera followed him as he slowly strolled across the room. She noticed that everyone had stopped what they were doing, had stood and found their own space to sit or lie down. “It goes off every few hours,” he continued, “and it’s how we know it’s around evening.”

“So she gives you shifts then. What happens to the people who are working?”

“They never really stop working. At the tone, everyone shifts a station over. This circulates the rooms and gives one of the groups a chance to eat. Though, this is normally only a small pouch of some alien sludge. I’m pretty much its taste depends on the person.”

Zepheera raised her brow and looked all around once more. “So it’s nighttime now,” she deduced.

“Yes. And we’re all going to sleep.”

She nodded as Zachary picked a spot on the floor and got into the most comfortable position possible. “Good night,” he muttered. She echoed this back and went to find her own sleeping spot.

…

The Doctor moaned quietly as he regained consciousness. His enormous headache was the first thing he was aware of. He rubbed his temple as he sat up and opened his eyes the tiniest bit. They shot wide open when he realized he was encased in glass. He scrambled to his feet and felt the entire circumference of his prison. A jar. One look up confirmed his suspicion that the opening was shut. Five air holes were poked into the lid.

He suddenly felt a pang of guilt toward Zepheera for doing almost this exact thing to her.

Zepheera! Where was she? He whirled around, this time taking in his surroundings. His jar was resting on a tabletop near a pile of identical metal shapes. It was also several inches from the edge. If he knocked the jar over and somehow avoided all the shattered glass, he might be able to find Zepheera. If she was alive, that is, but he didn’t dare think about that. He also hoped that Khardenia didn’t hear the smashing.

Deeming the outcome worth the risk, the Doctor backed further into the jar and threw himself into the opposite side. The jar moved almost an inch. It took three more tries to get the jar to the edge. This was it. One more time and the jar would come crashing to the floor. The Doctor inhaled deeply and made it count.

The jar tipped over the edge for a sickening moment and fell quickly to the floor. It made a loud PING on impact that made the Doctor’s head ring. But it didn’t shatter. Massaging the bruise that was forming on the back of his head, he couldn’t believe it hadn’t worked.

He scowled when he heard the clicking of heels approaching and Khardenia’s cold, coy laughter.

“Have you forgotten, Doctor, that Gharkon used to trade with the Venoxian denizens?” She smirked down at the Doctor, who didn’t even look her in the eye, and then picked up the jar by the lid with the tips of her fingers. The Doctor remained in a seated position, not bothering to stand. Khardenia gave the jar an amused little shake just to watch the Doctor slide around, and then set it back down on the table. “Or is it that your brain is just too _full_?” She went to the table opposite and sat down in a chair. From the mess on that table, she dug out what appeared to be nail polish and began to reapply her fingernails.

“You know what I’m going to do to those stupid little apes out there?” The Doctor turned his eyes to glare at her silently when she said this. “After they’re done building my big machine, I’m going to free their minds of the device I planted in their simple brains. And then I’m going to incinerate them. One by one. And make the others _watch_.” She blew on her nails, her eyes flitting up to look over at the Doctor’s reaction. He did nothing but glare. He wouldn’t give her the satisfaction.

“And then,” she continued, “I’m going to put their hard work to good use.” A smirk played over her lips. “Since you didn’t ask, what they’re building is a powerful photon cannon. It’s the best I can do at short notice with the limited resources on this bloody rock. That’s why I needed a bit of help. When my ship’s ready enough I will depart, but there will be nothing left to leave. The planet will _burn_ , Doctor. It’s so useless anyway; it may as well be a load of rocks and dust floating about. After that, I may return to Gharkon. Maybe blow that planet up as well.”

Khardenia blew on her nails once more and then got up to kneel next to the Doctor until he was about her eye level. His glare deepened and he broke eye contact with her.

“Oh, I can see it in your inquisitive little face. You know _exactly_ why I’m telling you all this. Don’t you, Doctor?” Without waiting for a reply, she got up and gave the glass a flick for good measure. The Doctor flinched a little at the amplified noise, but didn’t otherwise react. As she was walking away, Khardenia called over her shoulder:

“Because you won’t live long enough to stop me. Nighty-night!”

…

“Zepheera! Wake up!”

Zepheera was shaken awake the next morning. At least, she thought it was morning. She opened her eyes to glare up at Zachary, who had awoken her. “What is it?”

“Something’s happening!” He pulled her up to her feet and turned her in the direction of the two-dimensional hologram – much like a television screen – that was suspended about a foot above the floor. It contained the image of Khardenia, grinning evilly. As soon as all this processed, Zepheera was no longer tired. She sped to face the image head-on while the others quailed I fear against the far wall behind her. The room projected in front of her appeared to be a main computer room, but that was a far-fetched guess considering the various machines in the background.

“Well, I hope you’re all watching,” said Khardenia. “Especially you, my little urchin.”

Zepheera clenched her fists and blood pounded in her ears. It was obvious Khardenia meant her.

“I don’t suppose you’re…missing someone?” She lifted the mason jar containing the now conscious Doctor. He was standing in his prison with his arms outstretched on either side of him and his hands pressing against the glass to steady himself.

“Doctor!”

Khardenia didn’t seem to hear her, and neither did the Doctor. “It’s a shame he doesn’t have this.” With her other hand, she held up the Doctor’s Sonic Screwdriver casually between two fingers. Her heart sinking as she remembered that she had taken that from him, she watched in shock as she tossed it aside onto a table filled with rubbish.

Desperately, Zepheera looked back at the Doctor’s hologram. His eyes, those old eyes, seemed to gaze right at Zepheera with only one thing in them: apology.

“It’s not your fault,” she whispered almost silently.

“Now, this silly little Doctor’s been a naughty little one, hasn’t he?” Khardenia pouted at the screen in front of her. She was mocking Zepheera now, which enraged her. “Well, I suppose we’d better get along with it, hadn’t we, Time Lord?” She smirked at the Doctor and stepped out of the shot.

The image went fuzzy and static-y for a few moments and Zepheera’s breathing quickened in worry. “Doctor? Doctor!” she called to no one. When the picture came back, it showed a machine that resembled a laser aimed down at a table. There were straps the size of those on wrist watches attached to the table, and Khardenia had strapped the Doctor’s wrists and ankles tightly. Zepheera saw him struggle to no effect.

“This little toy of mine is my personal favorite,” Khardenia was saying. “It slowly hacks the victim in half, causing as much pain as possible. What’s more, it teases them first, starting at inch and a half away from them, just to make them _afraid_.” The hologram zoomed in on the Doctor as he struggled madly. “The amazing, legendary Doctor will die slowly and you, my little one, will watch.”

“No!” Zepheera lunged forward, but Zachary caught her arm. She had nearly shaken him off when Thomas ran up to help him. She resisted their grip. “Let go of me, you idiots!”

“There’s nothing you can do, Zepheera,” said Zachary.

“And…Three, two, one.” A thin streak of red appeared striking the table a distance from the Doctor. Every few seconds, it would be millimeters closer to him. He had even given up the struggle.

“No! No! Doctor!” Zepheera continued fighting Zachary and Thomas’ grips.

“Calm down – “

“Doctor!!” Zepheera’s eyes began to water angrily and her muscles ached; and yet she struggled on.

“He’s a dead man, Zepheera – “

“DOCTOR!!!”


	8. Deliverance

Chapter 7: Deliverance

There was the groan of bending metal and Zepheera stopped. Everything, even time, seemed to stop. Zachary and Thomas stared dumbly and their grips on Zepheera ceased. The wall leading to the corridor had been torn away somehow and crumpled like tinfoil.

Zepheera, heart racing, sprinted toward the new opening without question. “Hide here and wait for the Doctor and me!” she shouted over her shoulder.

Running at full speed, she saw Lady Khardenia run past in the opposite direction. She had, no doubt, heard the noise and had come to investigate. Zepheera knew she didn’t have much time. She continued on to the main computer room and, using her hook and line, climbed up to the Doctor’s torture table.

“Zepheera!” the Doctor cried upon seeing her.

“Are you alright?” Zepheera replied anxiously, undoing the Doctor’s binds. The laser had been shut off, which was good.

“How the hell did you escape?” The Doctor looked grateful for freedom, but confused as to its circumstances.

“I’ll explain later, we’ve got company!”

“Slaves!” Khardenia shrieked as she burst into the room; her eyes were crazed and her hair a mess. “Attend and attack!” From one door burst in about four near-human slaves, moving rather slowly, but fast enough to only give the two about a minute to do something.

Thinking quickly, Zepheera gathered her hook and line as fast as she could. “Doctor, down that corridor! There are more people she’s shrunk!”

“Right! I’ll take care of them! Get somewhere safe!”

“Not on your life!” She smirked. Grinning, the Doctor took her hand and they both broke into a run. Together, they leaped off the table’s edge, barely avoiding a slave’s grasp.

The Doctor darted down the aforementioned corridor and Zepheera hid behind a metal storage shelf tying her hook and line to her hip. The shelf almost reached the ceiling and Zepheera began to scale it. The entire time, the human-slaves were turning tables over looking for her; at least one of them was shaking the metal structure she was trying to climb, making it very difficult for her.

The Doctor, meanwhile, came across a mass of crushed metal and found hiding in its shadows the people Zepheera had told him of. He told them all to run and, as a group, they did.

Once at the top, Zepheera threw her hook over an exposed wire hanging from the ceiling. She might as well get a stab at revenge. She jumped and swung toward Lady Khardenia’s face. Drawing her machete, she intended to slice her face, but Khardenia brought a hand up to swat Zepheera away and she ended up chopping off her last two fingers. Khardenia let loose a blood-curdling shriek that confused her slaves momentarily. Zepheera’s grip was loosened at this loud noise and she fell to the floor.

“My ring!” screamed Khardenia.

Landing in a pool of blood, Zepheera found she’d chopped off the gold band as well. She went to pick it up; as she did, its size diminished until it could fit her arm. Curious, considering the approaching humans and the alien above her writhing in pain, she went to slide it up her bare right arm.

“Zepheera!” she heard the Doctor call her name before she took in a sharp breath and her eyes were forced closed.

Knowledge poured into Zepheera’s brain. Gharkonian anatomy. The ship’s schematics. The history of the ring itself. Khardenia was dying.

She knew exactly what to do.

Opening her eyes, she saw that the humans had frozen and Khardenia was on the floor in a fetal position breathing unevenly. The Doctor and the gingers were staring at her with worry. Almost automatically, Zepheera looked up at the enslaved humans, stood, and pointed at them. ‘Be free,’ she thought, and they un-froze. Each reacted in a slightly different way, but the result was them rushing out of the room in fear.

“Zepheera, how did you do that?” she turned to the Doctor, who had approached her when her back was turned.

“I know the way out,” she said calmly. She pointed to the door with her right arm and it split open. “That way, now.”

The Doctor looked at the door, then at Zepheera. She seemed almost possessed. And yet still herself. What _was_ that ring?

Zepheera was struggling to maintain control over her actions. It was like she was on autopilot for a while. As the Doctor looked at her strangely, she started to get the hang of it.

“Just get them out,” she pleaded, emotion returning to her voice. “I’ll tie up the loose ends.”

The Doctor had no idea what she was talking about, but he trusted her to do the right thing. Nodding once, he turned to Thomas and the gingers. “Come on! We’re getting out of here!” he led them out the door and down the corridor.

Zepheera shook her head, gaining full control over herself once more. She spent a minute rummaging through the fallen bits of rubbish scattered across the floor, and then pointed to the main computer.

“Self- destruct activated,” said the computer’s voice. With that, Zepheera turned and made for the exit.

“Oh, no you don’t,” said Khardenia weakly. She pulled herself up with her good hand and reached for the computer’s keyboard.

Zepheera whirled around and pointed again. “Deadlock seal online.” Khardenia slumped back into the floor, passed out from blood loss.

“Enjoy hell,” muttered Zepheera.

“Self-destruct in sixty…59…58...”

Zepheera ran as fast as she could to catch up with the Doctor and the others. All of them, led by Zepheera, entered a small round room with a small touch-screen jutting out from the wall. All this was, of course, to Khardenia’s scale, and to the inches-tall people cluttered in the center of the space, the touch-screen was far too high up to reach.

“Teleport?” the Doctor noticed. Zepheera nodded and shut the doors. She pointed up at the touch-screen and, after a second, all of them felt a strange feeling overcome them. They were instantaneously transported to a dark place while miles away the Gharkonian ship imploded on itself, leaving a clean hole in the ground and the remains of the ship now as small as a pill bottle.

“Where are we?” someone asked.

“Only one way to find out,” said the Doctor.

“I have a feeling that I know where, though,” said Zepheera. As their eyes adjusted to the darkness, any light leaking through was obvious. In the corner, there was a sliver of light just wide enough for someone their size to fit through. They all headed in that direction. On the other side, there were hundreds of humans milling about, carrying crates, hugging loved ones, waving goodbye. Many of them were ascending ramps onto monstrously big wooden structures floating upon the water.

“I knew it,” Zepheera grinned. “The shipyard.” She turned to the small crowd behind her, after taking in her surroundings. “Come on, this way,” she called. “We need to get somewhere more discreet.”

The tiny ginger people, the Doctor, and Zepheera kept to the shadows, but craned their necks curiously to see everything that was going on around them.  Zepheera, of course, had lived with this angle of things, but this was all completely new for the former humans. The Doctor had once experienced something similar to this, but certainly not recently and not at this particular scale. They all took shelter in an alley nearby and nearly everyone collapsed from fatigue, exhaustion, and relief. Zepheera took a seat on a bit of rubbish, absentmindedly rubbing the ring still on her arm with her thumb. She jumped in surprise when the Doctor came to sit next to her. He was smiling at her when she turned to look at him and she returned it.

Out of nowhere, they burst out laughing. They were so relieved to have made it out with at least some of the captured ones on the ship and, in-between laughs, they remarked on these things in barely understandable tones. After a while, they calmed down to the point where their laughs were mixed with contented sighs.

“Unbelievable!” the Doctor remarked. “You _killed_ her, just by slicing off a couple of fingers!” He mimicked a slicing motion, and Zepheera began another series of chuckles as the rolled her eyes and looked away modestly.

 “Yeah, well, how was I supposed to know that Gharkonian’s hands contain small, but important internal organs and from these extend into the fingers vital arteries that, if severed, can prove fatal?” She added another series of giggles and a long sigh as she calmed down from this spell. The entire time, the Doctor had quieted himself to listen carefully and was nodding his head when she had finished.

“And you know that now,” he pointed out. “How?”

Zepheera looked back at the Doctor, hesitated for only a beat, and then slid the gold band off of her upper arm to hold it in both hands. “This ring,” she replied. “It functions as a sort of hard drive and has stored on it loads of information. Though, I don’t think that most of this information was intended to be stored. I think that it mainly has information that any Gharkonian would think of as basic. But when _I_ put it on, this information was new to me, and so it all poured in at once. That’s why I blacked out for a second.”

“But you also controlled the ship with it, to some extent.”

“That’s its other function. See, it was also Khardenia’s tool. It could remotely control the ship, the microchips in the human slave’s brains, even that teleport we used. Between you and me, I think she just didn’t want to break any nails. But it also has another power that Khardenia seemed to enjoy using.”

“And that would be…” the Doctor urged after Zepheera paused for effect. She let out a long breath and continued:

“It can alter the size of nearly any object or creature, make it larger or smaller. In her case, she preferred smaller. Probably because she liked being the ‘bigger man’.”

“So, now that we have it, you can change us back,” said Thomas, who had been listening since the mention of the ring. Zepheera and the Doctor turned to look at him; most of the others had gathered around behind him to listen for Zepheera’s answer. She paused for a long time before closing her eyes and bowing her head slightly.

“I’m sorry. Once a change has been made, it can’t be reversed.”

The entire company seemed to deflate, and even the Doctor’s head lowered, not just for his sake, but for the sake of the rest of them.

“Stop looking so downhearted, the lot of you!” Zepheera slid the ring back onto her arm and stood to join Thomas and the others. The Doctor raised his head to watch her; it was obvious there was no stopping her and she was on a roll. “Don’t count this as a loss. This is just the beginning. The beginning of a new life for all of you! Now, you will have to change, to adapt, to adjust, but I promise you that once you have it you will embrace it. You can now take on the lifestyle that I grew up with.”

“What are you going on about?” demanded a young man named Jared. “You can’t mean that you were _born_ this size!”

“I _was_ , actually.” This statement received a few quiet gasps from the company before her. “And trust me, it’s not that hard. You just have to remember that you are not human anymore. Then you will be able to use humans as an asset. The key is to lie low. Find someplace safe near or inside a human home. Humans may be dangerous to you now, so be wary of them; but they can be excellent suppliers for essential things like food or materials for furniture and tools and weapons. These things are yours for the taking, as long as they are small, necessary to your survival, and won’t be missed.” As she spoke she walked slowly among the small crowd, gesticulating and looking everyone in the eye one by one.

“But if we are no longer humans,” interrupted a woman called Aurora, “Then what are we now?”

Zepheera stopped walking and bit her lip thoughtfully, as though considering something she probably shouldn’t consider. She finally answered, “You can become members of my people. We are borrowers, and so, too, are you now. And, I’m sorry, but you can’t all stay together. A large group is difficult to get around and even more difficult to hide. Stay in groups of three or four at most, and some of you should journey back to England on a boat. Things from this moment forward will be different, but you will get through it because we are borrowers. We are never seen and never heard. We are quiet, cautious, inconspicuous, alert, and brave! It’s our way, and it will always be our way!”

Zepheera’s speech seemed to motivate and excite the newly established borrowers, and they cheered loud enough to make their point, but not so loud as to attract unwanted attention. Thomas, seeming to have appeared out of nowhere, laid a hand on Zepheera’s shoulder and she whirled around to face him.

“This is all well and good, but how will we get back to England without being seen?” he asked. “And what will we eat? We’ll be trapped on board with hardly anything to steal from – “

“ _Borrow_ from them. We don’t steal, we borrow,” Zepheera corrected him, and the Doctor, still seated, but listening, managed a smile at the memory of her saying the same thing to him. Back when she could fit in his palm. He watched her as her face turned thoughtful, then seemed to lift with an idea. Her hands gripped the strap of her messenger bag that she had managed to keep on and removed it from her shoulder; she handed the bag to Thomas. He thanked her and then went to reorganize the group.

When he did a head count, he realized that twelve-year-old Lea was missing. Everyone began to search for her, and the Doctor found her further toward the edge of the alley. She was cowering behind a glass bottle in tears, looking up at the oblivious humans passing by. Cautiously, he guided her back to the group; all the while, she sobbed about her neck hurting, and the Doctor reported this to them once he had returned her. Zepheera came forward to comfort her. She whispered something in the little girl’s ear that seemed to calm her, and then Zepheera stood and joined the Doctor.

The crowd prepared to disperse, and Zachary hesitated to follow. “Will I ever see you again?” he asked Zepheera. When she shook her head sadly, his face darkened a bit. “Didn’t think so. Goodbye, Zepheera.”

“Goodbye.” Hesitating only half a second, she extended her arm toward him, hand balled into a fist. But somehow, it was a friendly fist. When Zachary regarded it in confusion, she said “Oh!” Then she took his wrist gently in her other hand, curling his fingers as well, then made his fist pound the top of hers twice. Then she tapped the top of his. Behind her, the Doctor watched them curiously as she leaned in to Zachary and whispered something in his ear. He smiled, nodded, and then joined the departing group.

She watched the crowd leave with a kind of sadness. It was as though her long lost family had gone instead of eleven strangers that she barely knew. She jumped a little when the Doctor’s hand slid into hers, and her chest filled with comforting warmth when she looked up to see him smiling at her.

“What was that? That fisty-bumpy thing?” he asked curiously.

“Oh, that, well--it’s sort of like when humans do handshakes, but it can mean many things. It can be ‘hello’, it can be ‘goodbye’, it can be ‘good luck’, it can be ‘peace’. I told him that, too.”

The Doctor beamed down at her, looking quite proud of her. “Well, I have to say Zepheera, that was very well done,” he remarked. “You got them to move on. They needed that.”

Zepheera smiled back. “They probably would’ve gotten themselves squished without me.”

The Doctor chuckled quietly as he looked over this 18-year-old girl. At her scale, she was even more interesting. She seemed naked, however, without her bag at her side, her hook and line hanging at her hip, and even her weapon on her back. The Doctor wondered if those had been her only possessions and, if so, she had given up everything she had to save those people and him.

Banishing the thought, the Doctor took in a sharp breath, released Zepheera’s hand, and began walking amongst the random bits of rubbish lying around; he seemed to be examining everything with personal interest, and Zepheera lagged behind him watching. While this was happening, the Doctor was talking:

“So! Tell me more about this _borrowing_ thing. How’s it done so secretly? What’s required to make furniture? How do you make clothes and shoes and things? How – “

“Doctor, _what_ are you going on about?” Zepheera interrupted.

The Doctor looked up at her from where he was crouched by an old, beat-up glove and stood slowly. “Well, it’s just that...we’re stuck here. I can’t unlock the Tardis from down here, much less pilot it.”

Zepheera furrowed her brow, and then reached into her pocket. She pulled out something small and silver and tossed it to the Doctor, who caught it. “What about this, then? Will this work?”

A smile crossed the Doctor’s face as he recognized the silver tube. “You saved my Sonic Screwdriver!” he exclaimed, his face full of appreciation and thanks. His expression softened as he considered its meaning. “Thank you, Zepheera,” he said, pocketing the thing. “I _can_ remotely control the Tardis to an extent with my Sonic. …But…”

Zepheera’s own smile wavered and she raised an eyebrow. “But…?” she urged.

“Well, I’m hardly any good to the universe small, am I?” The Doctor went back to closely examining the broken glass and the bits of leather lying before them. He didn’t realize at the time that that was the wrong thing to say.

Zepheera was rather taken aback by his response, clearly taking offense. “What’s wrong with being small?” she defended.

“What’s wrong with being _big_?” the Doctor blurted. The moment he said it, he regretted it. It had slipped out; he never knew when he was being rude until _afterward_. Zepheera’s eyes widened and she stared at him in a way that he had hoped to never be looked at again. He could only imagine what was going on in her head.

“Fine,” she said at last. “You didn’t give me a chance to tell you.” She began to back away from the Doctor, not meeting his gaze.

“Zepheera – “The Doctor began to follow her.

“No!” She held a hand up and he halted. “Just…just stay there.” He did and he watched as she backed up about two feet and then, very slowly and without lifting her eyes, pointed a finger at the Doctor.

All of a sudden, a strange sensation swept over the Doctor, like falling in reverse, and he was disorientated for a moment. He looked at his hands; they were still the same. But when he looked at the rest of him, he realized that he was back to his normal size!

He searched the pavement for Zepheera, hoping she hadn’t run away or something, and found her just a few feet in front of him. Her gaze, he noticed, was aimed toward the ground.

“Zepheera!” he exclaimed, gaping at her. He swept all the rubbish into a pile in the corner with his foot, and then lay on his stomach so as not to tower over Zepheera quite as much. His look of complete disbelief at her remained. “How did you do that? I thought you said the effects were irreversible!”

“They were reversible all along,” she admitted, finally looking up at him.

“But you could’ve let them go back to their families, to their lives – “

“If I did that, then I would cease to exist!”

Silence fell between them before Zepheera continued in a much calmer tone: “And it’s not just me, but millions upon millions of good, honest borrowers before and after me.”

“Are you saying that you just _created_ your own race?” the Doctor said incredulously.

“It only made sense! They were to perfect scale, the perfect attributes, and they all had their feeling.”

“How do you know that for sure?”

“Only that little girl, Lea, admitted to feeling it. Everyone else felt it, but they didn’t want to complain or they were too afraid.” As this sank in, Zepheera added, “And it all adds up. That’s why Agitha and Helga’s house was completely barren.”

“But you had said something about emigrating. What if there had been borrowers there, but they had left?”

“In that case, there would’ve been some sign of settlement. Not everything you make is easy to move with you, big things like furniture. But there was nothing. I just said that to make myself feel better” Her gaze bore into the Doctor’s. “I had no choice.” She cast her eyes away as they began to sting with tears that she was _determined_ not to shed. All this time, she had thought that borrowers had been around forever, and now it turns out they were barely old enough to be considered toddlers.

The Doctor nodded, but remained silent. Still lying down, he reached into his overcoat pocket and pulled out his Sonic. With no intended purpose or reason, he pressed down on its button just to see it glow and hear its familiar buzzing. Even Zepheera found comfort in its noise and the tiniest of smiles formed on her face. The Doctor pocketed it once more, and then held out a hand to Zepheera.

“Come on,” he said softly. “It’s time for you to go home.”

Zepheera nodded and together she and the Doctor travelled all the way back to the Tardis.


	9. Goodbyes

Chapter 8: Goodbyes

Once again, as the Doctor began piloting the Tardis through time and space toward November of 2000, Zepheera sat atop the Doctor’s shoulder. Her mind was thousands of miles away, however, as she thought about what she would do now. Her life would certainly not be the same. It seemed to her as though an instant passed when the Tardis landed.

Zepheera had given the Doctor his Tardis key back as well as Khardenia’s ring, and they both agreed that the safest place for her to hide without pocketing her was a place that hardly anyone looked and possibly the most dangerous place for her to be. She sat atop one of his converse shoes, her fingers tightly gripping the material and her feet tucked under the bottom lace. Here, she could go unnoticed while the Doctor walked around finding a decent place to drop her off and then, pretending to tie his shoe, she could slip off without anyone seeing.

The Doctor lifted one of the laces for her and she slipped both feet underneath. All through the preparation, they were silent. The Doctor wanted nothing more than for Zepheera to travel with him right then. And she _had_ told him that she was alone, same as him. But he had promised himself, that never again would he take on another companion. He knew that no matter what, somehow something horrible would happen to Zepheera. And even if she lasted, she wouldn’t live forever. He’d still lose her. It was best if she went home.

Zepheera’s mind was focused on travelling with the Doctor as well. Only she was considering asking if she could stay with him. After the adventure she just had with the Doctor, how was she expected to return to her normal routine? Nothing would excite her anymore, and life would be excruciatingly _dull_. But she knew that if the Doctor wanted her aboard he would’ve asked her. And going back home was the safest thing he could do for her. That made it the right thing to do. …Didn’t it?

As it turned out, the Tardis had landed exactly where it had before. The Doctor had only to walk a short distance before he got to the correct alley, and there he stopped walking, looked down at his feet, and came down on one knee as Zepheera pulled her feet free, released her grip and slid off the shoe. Straightening her shirt, she forced a grin turned to look up at the Doctor.

“Farewell, Doctor.” She waved with her entire arm. The Doctor smiled back, having ended the shoe-tying bit.

“Goodbye, Zepheera.” With that, he stood and brushed off his suit pants and Zepheera turned to go back to her hole. As soon as her back was to him, her grin melted faster than butter. The Doctor stood there a few seconds more watching her go. He let out a long breath that transitioned into a quiet chuckle to himself, and then he turned on his heel and started back to his Tardis.

Once Zepheera reached her hole in the brick she ran her fingers along the rough material, letting the events of the last day really sink in. In one day she had been inside an impossible bigger-on-the-inside blue box, befriended a giant – and an alien of all things! – traveled back in time, defeated an alien overlord and created her own race. In one day she had lived more than she had in all her years.

She decided right then that she wasn’t about to give that up.

Without putting another thought behind it, she took off running, hoping she hadn’t missed him. She stayed close to the side of the walk furthest from the street so as to avoid the pedestrians’ feet and attention, and she ran so fast she could’ve easily outrun the cat from the other day. She counted the alleyways and skidded to a stop when she found the Tardis and the Doctor, who had just turned unlocked the door and begun to open it.

“Doctor!” she shouted at the top of her lungs. The Doctor whirled around to look down at her with wide eyes as she stopped to catch her breath; she was breathing rather heavily from her sprint.

“Zepheera!” The Doctor was at a loss for words. He came down on one knee once more, his confusion and objection evident on his face.

Before he could say anything else, Zepheera said loudly and clearly, “Take me with you!”

This really took the Doctor aback. “You want to come with me?”

“Yes!” She was grinning widely and had mostly caught her breath. “This past day was the best day of my life! Aliens, monsters, time and space! I want every day to be like that! I can’t possibly go back to normal now, and I have nothing here!”

Even still, the Doctor was wary. He remained silent and his expression slowly reverted to one of deep thought. Zepheera took his nonresponse as a no and her smile slowly faded.

“You don’t want me to come,” she stated.

“Oh, no, it’s not that,” the Doctor quickly replied. “Believe me; I would _love_ it if you would travel with me.”

“But…” Zepheera could hear a ‘but’ coming and got it out of the way.

The Doctor hesitated a beat before answering: “You’re so young, and you have your whole life ahead of you. But no matter how much of that life is spent with me, I can’t spend more than a fraction with you. I…Time Lords have this ability, this way of cheating death. Instead of dying, we regenerate every single atom in our bodies. Our physical forms change and our personalities change, but we’re still very much the same person.” Zepheera nodded to indicate she understood when the Doctor paused here.

“I’ve done this nine times so far,” he continued. “I’m over nine hundred years old. And though I can’t help getting old, I…I just don’t want to see another slip away.”

Zepheera bit her lip and locked eyes with the Doctor.

“You’re looking good for nine hundred,” she replied at last, a smile forming on her face. Even the Doctor had to chuckle at this. Laughing softly, Zepheera threw her hands up in mock surrender. “Not that I’m interested, so put that out of your mind.” They both had a good laugh about that, and when it died down, Zepheera looked down at her feet.

“Doctor, I have something to tell you. And it may affect your answer to my request.” Her eyes flitted up to the Doctor’s almost shyly.

“What is it?”

After a slight hesitation, Zepheera took a deep breath and spoke. “I’m a genetic mutation of the borrower gene in many different ways. I can heal quickly – though I really get that from my father – and I have a very powerful form of telekinesis that I try to suppress. You saw some of that; remember the metal wall back from the ship?” she added when the Doctor appeared surprised; he nodded and she continued, “That comes from my mental capacity, I think. Like it’s been unlocked in my brain or something. But anyway, the main mutation is this: I have a…an incredibly long life expectancy.”

The Doctor’s brow rose as this really sank in.

“That date I asked you for when I first entered the Tardis, eighth of March in the year 1927…That was a month after my birth.”

“You’re seventy-four years old,” the Doctor thought aloud, his eyes softening in an expression of slight understanding.

Zepheera nodded. “Yep. And I have no idea how long I’m going to live. I mean, I grew up like normal and just sort of stopped at eighteen. I’ve been eighteen all my life! And now I don’t know if I’m going to live to be a hundred, or a thousand, or even a million. I just…” Her voice cracked a little in emotion, but she swallowed hard, inhaled deeply and pushed past it. “And for fifty-five years, it’s been the same thing. Stay in one town for a few weeks, maybe a month, and then move on to the next one. I’m about to run out of cities! And I may have only gotten a taste of what life is like with you…but even so, if I tried to go back to the way things were I would drive myself _mad_ trying to compensate.” She turned her gaze back up to the Doctor. “Please, Doctor. Take me away.”

He seemed to be contemplating as he stared at her. Zepheera bit her lip in anticipation. After a moment, he glanced over his shoulder at his Tardis, then stared at a spot on the ground, and finally turned back to Zepheera with a grave expression.

“You realize that your life would be in danger every second,” he stated.

Zepheera raised an eyebrow. Was that a no or an almost yes? She answered, “Danger? I eat it for breakfast.”

“And there would be quite a lot of running involved.”

“Promise?”

“No going back.”

Zepheera paused at this taking in a deep breath. “Why would I want to go back? I’d be with you.”

“Now we’re back to the danger point.”

“And I don’t care about the dangers and risks. Just as long as it’s you and me, and time and space.”

Slowly an adventurous smirk crossed the Doctor’s face and he laid a hand palm-up in front of Zepheera.

“Welcome aboard.”

Zepheera’s face lit up quick as a light-bulb and she leapt forward onto the Doctor’s hand and, despite herself, embraced his erect thumb. The last bit surprised the Doctor for a moment, but he smiled as she let go with an equally adventurous look on her face. The Doctor stood and carried her into the Tardis, shutting the door behind them. Soon enough, with that noise without equal ringing through the alleyway, they were gone.

And so began Zepheera’s adventures with the Doctor.

**Next Time**

_Zepheera stares confusedly at her reflection in a mirror. She looks terrible, slightly pale and very tired. She wears a simple sleeveless gray dress and seems to not recognize her own face, which she reaches a hand to touch._ "So!" _says the Doctor in voiceover; at the same time, something out of frame startles Zepheera. Her head snaps toward it and--_ Cut to _The Doctor standing in the control room, casually working the controls with a regularly dressed Zepheera on his shoulder._ "Your first official trip on the Tardis!"  _he exclaims._

 _Now several images play out quickly and one after the other. Zepheera is shoved into a white pocket; then she's in a dark place encased in glass; a woman with sandy hair, also encased in glass, holds out her arm to reveal--_ Cut to _Zepheera running as fast as she can down a white corridor; then she's sitting down in a different room, someone's fingers at her temples._ "Who the hell  _are_  you??"  _she demands, pulling away._ Cut to _Zepheera holding a bundle of fabric curiously, finding a little homemade needle among its folds. It nicks her on the thumb, which doesn't heal right away. in fact, it doesn't heal at all. All the while, in voiceover, the Doctor says_ "It's me, it's the Doctor." Cut to  _The Doctor, kneeling, his face full of concern, worry and confusion._ "You remember me, right?" _he asks._

Cut to  _Zepheera, cheeks streamed with tears and curled into a terrified ball with her back to a metal wall, shakes her head slowly._ "I don't remember you."

[INSERT DOCTOR WHO LOGO AND CREDITS]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so concludes the first installment of my new series, which I've entitled 'The Little Things'. I'm really excited about this, and I hope that you enjoyed it! Some of the upcoming installments will be multi-fandom crossovers with fandoms such as Harry Potter, Supernatural, Quantum Leap, and Thor(Marvel movie-verse). The lesser known fandoms can be easily synopsized (like Quantum Leap) so please read them anyway!
> 
> Feedback is welcome, and keep an eye out for the next part of the series, entitled 'Memories'. Thanks so much for reading!


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